Last updated 12:42, Wednesday, 29 October 2008

If you could win trophies for being obnoxious, terminally stupid and utterly deluded, Joey Barton would have a silverware cabinet full to bursting.

Tyne-bomb: Joey Barton

As things stand he hasn’t won a solitary medal and he’s achieved nothing apart from a reputation for being a thug and a bully.

He’s more famous for stubbing out a cigar in the eye of a former team-mate and punching another one in the face during a training ground fracas than he is for his ability on the pitch.

After serving a prison sentence for violence, he’s lucky to still be in a job - never mind one that earns him £80,000-a-week - because in just about every other occupation he’d have been given the sack.

Now he says he wants to be a role model for young people and prove to the world he’s mended his ways. The whole notion of Barton being held up as a shining example to the nation’s youth is utterly revolting. . . unless of course you’re Vicky Pollard, in which case he’s probably a hero.

You’d have thought by now he’d have learned to keep his mouth zipped, get his head down and concentrate on proving to those of us who have written him off that he’s capable of transforming himself from sinner to winner.

But no sooner had he been released from prison and then served a six-match ban, he’s back in hot water again.

You can always rely on Barton to act like an idiot in the face of provocation and he was at it again during Saturday’s explosive Wear-Tyne derby, making eyeball-to-eyeball contact with fans and then planting a smacker on his club badge in a deliberately provocative act which helped spark a pitch riot and punch-up.

Barton must have known fans would try to bait him with cat calls and cries of ‘You’re supposed to be in jail.’

If he’s so determined to prove he has turned over a new leaf, he should have ignored it - as any professional footballer would.

But those Sunderland fans who responded to his antics while he was warming up on the touchline are no better than him – and they should be banned for life.

Barton now finds himself being used as a convenient scapegoat for the trouble that flared after the game.

Saturday’s 2-1 win over the Magpies should have been a momentous occasion for Sunderland fans like me.

We should be remembering nothing else apart from Kieran Richardson’s rocket free kick which was worthy of winning any derby.

We should also have been revelling in Newcastle’s first defeat on Wearside since April 1980. Instead the occasion won’t be forgotten in a hurry because of the 29 arrests that were made after violent clashes, a pitch invasion and Newcastle keeper Shay Given being confronted by fans.

A mounted police woman was struck on the head by a firework and seats were ripped out and hurled on the pitch by rampaging fans – sickening scenes that we thought had become a thing of the past at football grounds.

What happened in the aftermath of Saturday’s wonderful result over our old enemy heaped shame on Sunderland.

For once no one can blame bad-boy Barton for that. But he’s going to have to score a few more goals like last night’s strike against West Brom to prove he’s a new man.