Amongst all the excitement of the first week of the Premier League one man again made the headlines for the wrong reasons...Joey Barton was again vilified in the sports pages of the majority of the Sunday papers along with a little bit of a roasting on MOTD, but was it his fault this time?
First things first, I have absolutely no knowledge of Joey Barton the person, the only things I do know are the well publicised "incidents" which he has been involved in, all of which are of his own making and in all honesty I do think he should have been more harshly dealt with on all occasions...but as much of an idiot as these incidents have shown the man may be, why is it the media and the general public are so quick to blame?
Lets take a look at Saturday's game against Arsenal and take the two incidents involving Barton back to base principals, that is to say lets treat the situations as purely hypothetical;
Scenario A: Player A slides into a rather robust challenge with Player B, Player A ends up on the floor at the feet of Player B, Player B takes exception at the tackle by Player A (important note at this point, the ref who is mere yards away from the incident and didn't feel the tackle was a foul). Player B purposely stamps on Player A's leg.
Scenario B: Player C makes a run into the box and hangs out a leg in the direction of the defender as he begins to fall to the ground trying to win a penalty. Player A takes exception to this and hauls Player C to his feet by his shirt. Inevitable a fracas ensues, pushing, shoving and grabbing. Player C then flings out a hand ans slaps Player A in the face, Player A hits the floor like Mike Tyson has just unleashed hell on his face.
In both of the scenarios above the vast majority of the footballing community would be siding with Player A, especially in Scenario A. Whilst most would feel that Player A has overreacted slightly by hauling Player C to his feet they'd probably be willing to excuse him on the basis that it was in the heat of the game and that Player C had dived and whilst again most people would be embarrassed by Player A's reaction to a fairly feminine slap across the chops, they would understand him going down. It does happen on a fairly regular basis in the modern game.
So can someone please explain to me why as soon as Player A is replaced with Joey Barton everyone suddenly blames him. Its a simple as this, the guy is forever being judged on his prior acts of idiocy, but is it fair? How many times has he done anything that bad on a football pitch? Compare that to Roy Keane's assault of Alf Inge Haaland, Eric Cantona's flying kick or Marco Materazzi in general, these guy's were/are all hero's amongst their fans, especially for their villainy.
Don't get me wrong, the things that Joey Barton has done off the pitch in the past are inexcusable...but is this really just cause to constantly be on a witch-hunt against the man for what he does on the pitch? If Scott Parker was involved in Scenario B, wouldn't he just be applauded for being committed?
At the end of the day, I'm not defending the man, I'm just making a point...
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