I was expected to play like Messi, Neymar at Rangers – Joey Barton

Former Manchester City, Newcastle United and Burnley midfielder, Joey Barton has revealed that he was expected to perform like a “Neymar and Messi” after joining Scottish giants, Rangers.

The one-capped England international questioned people’s expectations of him when he moved to the Scottish Premiership.

The 34-year-old ended his brief and ill-fated spell at Rangers in November after being suspended following a training-ground row with club manager in the wake of a 5-1 defeat at Celtic.

And he told the BBC that the expectations on him were so big.

He said, “The media were quite critical of me when I was up there.

“That’s the nature of the industry when you’re Joey Barton and you go and play for Rangers who are a massive club in Scotland.

“You’re going to get criticism if you don’t play fantastically well and I didn’t play fantastically well there, albeit I only lasted eight games.

“The difficulty for me lay in the fact that before I went up there they kind of built me into this Neymar, Messi kind of player, which I wasn’t.

“I’m a player that’s never been blessed with an enormous amount of talent, speed, tricks. I’m somebody who has always served the higher purpose in terms of the team, always done well when that’s been at the fore. I’ve never done particularly well when the onus has been on me to go on and create and do things.

“Everyone was saying ‘you’ve been caught out by the standard of Scottish football, you’ve looked down your nose at Scottish football’. I didn’t. I knew what I was getting into.”

Barton, who has been training with his former club, Burnley, added, “I’m focusing on the future, I’ve still got that bit about me where I step back south of the border and have an enormous amount of credibility and people want me to come to the football club.

“My phone has rung a number of times about where I’m going to be in January, so I’m lucky.”

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