Joey Barton: ‘I’ve been through many scrapes … my chaotic career will help me as a manager’ | Donald McRae

Fleetwood Town’s rookie manager believes his controversial past and philosophy degree will help him relate to his players

A day with Joey Barton at Fleetwood Town, in the week of his first competitive match as a manager, is like no other in English football. It starts just after breakfast at the League One club’s gleaming training centre, Poolfoot Farm, which is modelled on the facilities at Bayern Munich and Ajax. Seven miles from Blackpool, Fleetwood’s base is calm and good humoured.

“You’ve got to talk to Frog because he’s a reader and we’re having incredible conversations about JFK conspiracy theories,” Barton says as he introduces me to Tony Barlow, Fleetwood’s burly head of security. A former paratrooper who only learnt how to read and write when he was 21, the erudite Frog offers detailed views on what might have happened on the grassy knoll almost 55 years ago before assessing Gavin Menzies’ theory that Chinese explorers discovered America decades before Christopher Columbus.

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