The Joey Barton interview is, in many ways, a compelling listen. Here is a footballer speaking in pretty articulate terms about a range of football-related issues. He’s forceful with his opinion, has some insight and has a real grasp of footballers’ instincts and motivations. I am glad he got the chance to be on.
However, the issue with Joey Barton is that he’s almost interesting. But he isn’t quite interesting enough. The reason for this is that he is too incoherent to be really worth listening to. What I mean is that he is scattergun with his views and assertions. His opinions don’t always flow in a single stream of consciousness as he’s so keen to demonstrate his understanding of a wide range of issues. The outcome is that this totally undermines the potentially interesting ideas and views he holds. Far too often he punctuates a solidly held opinion with a tangential gripe that can take him off piste and sees him forging a different point altogether.
Early in the interview he rightly states that an expert is knowing an awful lot about not very much – essentially, he’s suggesting that one must really narrow ones focus on a single thing to then become an expert in that specific field. The irony is that Barton doesn’t live by that principle. Instead, he holds strong opinions on such a wide range of inter-related topics that it becomes too unmanageable to follow exactly what he’s trying to say. Indeed, the outcome of his approach is that he comes across as just shooting from the hip on a number of rich and complex issues that require a more thorough analysis than Barton is prepared or able to give. Added to this are the random digs he gives in various directions (as if it serves as some kind of therapy).
In the interview, he makes huge leaps from talking about Shankly being ignored when he left Liverpool to immediately linking this point to the modern-day disconnect with fans. The conflation of these two issues is intellectually redundant and speaks more about some broader discontent Barton has with football than anything to do with Liverpool or their relationship with fans.
An example of his fluffy, shallow analysis is his discussion about coaches needing to have top-level experience to be any good. This is, in itself, a really interesting point. But Barton deals with it in such crude terms (Wenger has lost it, Mourinho only does it with money) that he renders his point glib at best and just wrong at worst.
The point about all this is that Barton has some interesting views of the world, but that doesn’t mean he has licence to give off on the next thought and grievance to enter his head. Yes he knows the football world, but he should know that a lot of the issues he’s willing to pontificate on are a lot more interesting that he allows them to be. So rather than feeling he has to sum up an issue and have an answer about it, he needs to understand that it’s sometimes more interesting to actually decide that the answers are really difficult to come by so deeper discussion is worthwhile.
Neil was very restrained during the interview, and rightly so. There’s no value in turning it into Talksport and having a go at each other. However, when Neil did try to turn some of the discussion points into more in-depth points of interest (eg football and its cultural role), Barton was more interested in being ‘right’ than potentially exploring a matter in greater depth.
In short, Barton needs to realise that there’s virtue in discussing rather than asserting and that complex issues require respect and answers aren’t always warranted.
