Trouble’s brewing…Villa are reportedly lining up Joey Barton to replace Steve Sidwell who seems to be set to leave the club in January. The controversial, I think I can safely say, ‘wanker’ is apparently on Gerard Houllier’s radar and a cut price fee is thought to be in place with new Newcastle manager Alan Pardew seemingly more than happy to see the back of Barton. Were he to join he would team up with Stephen Ireland, if he stays, once again after the two were on the books at Manchester City. If Houllier has attitude issues with Ireland he should probably go out and buy Joey Barton, makes perfect sense to me! Despite the fact that he is an uncontrollable idiot, Barton has undoubted skill and technical ability and he has caught the eye of many pundits this season, and the ribs of Morten Gamst Pedersen who scored against Villa this year so we can forgive him for that. Fighting kids may be a problem with Villa’s young stars coming through maybe facing a more literal scrap for places than they would have hoped were he to join. In 13 games for the Toon this season Barton has 2 goals and 4 assists since missing much of the club’s promotion campaign last year. The 28-year-old is entering the final 18 months of his contract which has led Newcastle to supposedly slap a cut price fee of just £1.5m on his head, hopefully it was a pretty hard slap on the head too! A bargain? Yes. A tosser? Yes! Your thoughts please…
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