Really feel for Joey Barton today what with the news that his dream move to Marseille has broken down. I know Joey a bit and believe me as a young lad growing up his one ambition in the game was to one day pull on the famous blue or green or whatever it is shirt of the French giants. Joe told me he loved the place it was because a poet called Rambo died there. I’m not one for poetry myself, or Sylvester Stallone, but Marseille has always been in Joe’s heart.

In my own career I have had the indignity of getting all hyped up for a transfer and then having the rug whipped out from underneath you and raining  on your parade at the eleventh hour. It was like when I was at Watford and they told me they was sending me on loan to Barcelona. They actually ended up sending me to work in the night-club Barcelona, which is in Rickmansworth and to be fair more known for it’s four-for-one WKD Thursdays than it is for its Tika Taka. They said if i wasn’t getting in the team I might as well make myself useful and clean up some of the vomit by the ladies loos and to be honest as a young player it takes a lot of strenght of character to come back from that sort of a disappointment.