Light sentence leaves Barton open to reoffend

Joey Barton was handed just a six-match suspension after seriously injuring a team-mate while at Man City

Comment

A six-game ban for seriously injuring a team-mate in a seemingly random act of violence is not only severely lenient from the FA but potentially negligent bearing in mind Joey Barton’s continual failure to better himself despite crisis after crisis.

The tale of Barton’s desperate life has new, negative chapters written at regular intervals - and this novel can surely only be described as a horror with a cataclysmic climax.

While such an extended ban is rare in England, Europe will be looking, through troubled and wondrous eyes, at the lax suspension handed to one of the Premier League’s worst trouble-makers and least amicable persons. For observations that the league has a thug element and holds little technical skill, read Barton and waist-high challenges that go unpunished.

The FA’s disciplinary system could easily find a place amongst the tools of the Ancien Régime. So backward that only once last season was a punishment for dismissal altered (which, by the way, was to bizarrely reduce Alan Smith’s suspension from three games to two despite being sent off for abusive language towards a referee’s assistant) and so pompous and underworked that they regularly add one match to a suspension for a ‘frivolous’ appeal rather than dealing with the real culprits.

In Spain or Italy, bans for diving are handed out retrospectively and extended suspensions are regularly proffered for abuse of referees and poor tackles. The FA system is so blundering that they couldn’t even meet a stern Fifa request to extend Martin Taylor’s three-game suspension for his leg-breaking challenge on Arsenal’s Eduardo. As Sepp Blatter and the world raged at the tackle, the FA’s response was typical of their desire to stand away from any possible conflict or controversy.

Rather than reviewing the Taylor case, they instead gave Jeremie Aliadiere a four-game suspension that same weekend, for touching the face of an opponent, with one extra game for the frivolity of appeal.

An FA promise to review their disciplinary measures at the end of the season was made, but little seems to have changed.

Fifa spokesman Andreas Herren best summed up the situation, talking in March, “There will be a meeting next month with the FA, but it will be an exchange of views on disciplinary matters in general. It will not be related to the Taylor case per se because that has now been dealt with. The FA have pointed out to us the considerations they took in determining his sanction and the case is not going to be pursued by Fifa. Both sides felt, however, that a general discussion would be beneficial and we hope the meeting can help us get a broader picture of the issues involved.”

In France, any violent conduct is dealt with severely, regularly resulting in double-digit suspensions for the perpetrators. When I told a high level referee friend in France that this would only ever mean a three-game suspension in England, his reaction was one of complete shock.

Barton’s suspension will again promote ridicule. A court heard earlier this year that 25-year-old repeatedly punched Dabo as he lay dazed on the ground and at one stage the Frenchman lost consciousness. The only relevant contemporary case to that of Barton’s is when Ben Thatcher, then of Manchester City, horrifically and deliberately elbowed Portsmouth’s Pedro Mendes, who fell unconscious. Then, the FA decided to be proactive after referee Dermot Gallacher only showed a yellow card, and charged Thatcher with serious foul play.

He was handed a suspension of eight matches, with a further fifteen suspended for two years. The FA commented that they “contend that the challenge was sufficiently serious that had Thatcher been sent off, an additional sanction would have been merited,” technically meaning the eight-game ban would have totalled 11 had the Welshman been sent off at the time.

Barton’s actions seem at least as, if not more, brutal than Thatcher’s yet the suspension belies this feeling. Thatcher’s attack was momentary and one fleeting moment of madness, while Barton continuously attacked Dabo as he lay on the ground. It is the equivalent of Thatcher, having elbowed Mendes, getting up and punching the Portuguese repeatedly while on the floor unable to defend himself, and that action, of course, would have resulted in a far longer suspension.

Before Barton’s case was heard, his camp appealed for leniency in the view that he and Newcastle United have endeavoured to get the player back on the right track and that a lengthy ban would not support this bid. But how many let-offs and extra opportunities can a repeat offender like Barton receive? It is not his first discrepancy and surely won’t be his last. Will the FA live to regret this ill-advised show of goodwill?

The commission’s statement that they “took into consideration the sanctions imposed by the courts and the pro-active support Mr Barton has received from Newcastle United and other professional bodies” and “wanted to punish the offence appropriately but give Mr Barton an opportunity to ensure his professional conduct does not falter again” are excellent excuses but they have again been too soft on an extremely disturbing and serious issue.

Whatever the sentence was, however, always bore little relevance on the mental state and future of Barton. Whether it was a six- or 12-match suspension would not have changed the former Manchester City player’s troubled state and it is now up to his club, all the relevant specialists and Barton himself to attempt to fix what has become an exhausting, prolonged and dangerous problem.