The problem with attempting to defend Joey Barton these days is that by the time you try to he’s already done it for himself on Twitter. There was certainly some dissatisfaction on Sky’s ghastly Sunday Supplement shout-a-thon about Barton’s medium of choice, with the argument that him stating his case on Twitter only allows for messages of “140 characters or fewer” put forward. And there we were again, at the dawn of a new season, with that oft-preached lament about modern football and its lack of characters.
There’s no doubting that, aside from a character limit that allows only double the amount of words one would ordinarily expect to hear from a footballer in a post match interview, Joseph’s online activities have been the cause of some concern over summer: I was as disappointed as anybody to discover he follows Piers Morgan. Apart from that, though, his Twitter stuff is largely harmless (does anybody believe he and the owners wouldn't have eventually found some way to clash over his new contract without Twitter- using mesenger pigeons if necessary?). And, like Eric Cantona taking a sip of water to conceal his laughter during a crucial bit in his ‘seagulls follow the trawler’ press conference, pompous journalists who can’t work out that he is clearly taking the piss with the Orwell and Nietzsche quotes are succeeding only in making themselves look stupid.
Over the weekend, he got in to an argument on there with Jack Wilshere. The fact that Wilshere (whom Barton has in the past showered with fulsome praise) instigated the argument was largely lost on everybody, which is odd. If somebody with a recent history of drinking to excess is picking fights with a teetotaller on Saturday night, one would ordinarily expect the doorman to remove to former, not chastise the latter. (The comparison of the British press and the nation’s bouncers is not a spurious one- anybody who has ever been a subject of Pubwatch will tell you that they both posses pretty nifty surveillance equipment.) Yet here the roles seemed confused in the mind of the media. Strange.
As for Saturday on the pitch? He’s probably explained already, but, for the record: there is a huge difference between diving following non-existent contact to unfairly alter the course of the game and going to ground softly to alert the referee to a genuine offence, and though the latter is dubious practice, it is understandable when the officials have previously missed a malicious stamp on the back of your leg, and certainly not comparable with the first example of genuine cheating. There is nothing people feel as smug about as pointing out supposed hypocrisory in others, which might explain why so many people rush to do it when it isn’t actually appparant in the contrasting words and actions of their subject, but in drawing attention to Gervinho’s red card offence, Barton was not cheating or conning anybody: he was aiding a referee who had displayed myopia in a previous incident. Barton- and Taylor’s- reaction is irrelevant: Gervinho was a goner anyway. And if not, if the referee is basing his calls on the reaction and behaviour of the players, then he is not doing his job correctly, and that’s nothing to do with Joey Barton.
But enough of that nonsense, what of the debutants? Ba was unlucky to get taken off before Ameobi, Cabaye struggled to impose in a game clearly not made for him, Obertan showed some promising flashes, and in my new seat in the East Stand I was immense. Obviously, pre-match nerves had been marked (I had began my previous tenure, in the Gallowgate End at the start of the 09/10 season, by attempting small talk about the new design of the metro tickets to blank embarrsment and from there never really recovered), but I put them to one side and gave a masterful display in close control- not correcting the gentleman behind me when he mistook Ameobi for Ba- and enterprising flank play- running quickly down the stairs to see the replay of the Barton/Gervinho incident and reporting straight back.
An impressive start, but nobody is getting carried away. It’s easy to get plaudits against Arsenal; will I be as well received on a cold Wednesday night in December against West Bromich Albion when the shirt lettering is frazzled and the stairways are slippery? It’s a long season and the real challenges still lie ahead.
(Incidentally, the Arsenal fans that ended their day screaming for their manager to “spend some money” had begun it by telling the home fans that they “pay [our] benefits.” There’s symmetry there, I think, and both songs manage to neatly capture an attitude of greed, entitlement and crass, finance obsessed superciliousness which contributed towards many of their city’s residents finally losing their patience last week in one of the most horrible ways imaginable. I’m not saying that Arsene Wegner’s spending policy helped cause the London riots. But, with those riots as a backdrop, the bunch of charmers in the Arsenal support may want to consider their song selection a little more carefully.)
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