Post match:
www.bristolpost.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/every-word-joey-barton-said-5260798It's quite easy to see why he gets himself into trouble. At times he appears to realise he's going down the wrong track and does a 180. There's a lot of rambling on, and at times complete incomprehensible babble.
Every word Joey Barton said on 'soul-destroying' Ipswich defeat and toughest time of his career.Well, Joey, for what it’s worth it was a really encouraging performance from your players today. I guess it was just those opening minutes that cost you the game today?Yeah and that’s the story of the season isn’t it? Individual moments of madness and errors have cost us. 39 games in you think you’ve seen everything in the game.
I certainly haven’t seen a team play like they did in the first 10 minutes, it was like they were starting in Fawlty Towers, it was shocking and absolutely nowhere near good enough.
Credit to them, they’ve found themselves in a ridiculous position after 11 minutes and then they’d decided to fight. I’m proud of the further 70-80 minutes because they kept going and going but you can’t give goals away at any level, never mind two in the first 10 minutes.
The lads are disappointed in there and there are players who are only in the starting 11 because of other players being injured.
They’ve got to take those opportunities when they present themselves. I said to them in there that they’re privileged to play professional football, you don’t just take it for granted, it’s the best job in the world. It’s the worst job in the world when you’re in moments like this.
It’s very tough, as tough of a period as I’ve ever been through in my career of professional football, I’ve never lost five on the spin as a player or as a coach and it’s very, very testing at this moment in time. I’m fully aware of the situation and where I think it’s come from.
I have an absolutely, crystal-clear view on where it’s come from and everyone at the club is aware of it. Wheels have changed in the process and there are players who are fighting for their places as Rovers employees.
If they don’t realise what’s at stake for the fans and for the club then they should depart.
Having seen Joe Day sent off at Charlton a few weeks ago, should Thomas Holly have been given a red card for his challenge on Jonah today?I can’t even begin to speak about referees, I don’t understand the difference, other than it’s against us. I don’t really want to use that as an excuse, again we were our own worst enemy.
We’ve given away two goals in the opening gambit of the game, you’ve got to take the referee and decisions out of it.
That probably would’ve shifted the tie, at 2-1, we’re probably in the ascendancy and their keeper should leave the field if we’re being honest.
He’s come outside of the box and our player has touched it past him, the linesman on my side is saying he doesn’t think it was a goal-scoring opportunity.
I’ve asked the ref at half-time and full-time and he says he doesn’t think he was in control of the ball, well of course it wasn’t because he’s got Harald Schumacher’d by Tomas Holy.
He was taken out so he’s touched the ball and it would’ve stayed in play for a shooting opportunity. What can you do? If I say what I really think then I’ll be suspended and the FA will fine me, so you can’t even tell the truth because they’ve become such an unaccountable organisation.
It’s ruining games and it’s cost us multiple times since I’ve been here in my first 11 games. I think I better shut up about it and there are people out there from the officiating organisation who do care to listen to me, then I can send them a compilation of our last 11 games.
There have been too many poor decisions for it to be a coincidence.
Seven games to go and only Northampton won today out of the bottom six. Does the last 70 minutes of your performance give you hope of staying up?We need our best players for sure, we’re losing our best players thick and fast and as I say, when you come into a club, you expect it to be at a certain level.
When I got inside, I thought oh god what’s been going on here? That’s what we need to fix, ultimately we’d have liked everything to be hunky-dory and at the appropriate levels, but the tough part of it is that we’ve come here today and lost another game.
We work entirely about the next game and the next game but there are 21 points to play for, there are teams with games in hand on us, so we have to show that it means a lot for us to stay in the division.
Currently, on current projections I don’t think the club deserves to stay in the division. I don’t think you can do the things that have been done and deserve to stay up so we’ve got work to do between now and those seven games.
If we don’t get the job done then we’ll have nobody to blame other than ourselves. The league table doesn’t lie, certainly after 39 league games.
If we want to prove we want to be here next year, we have to start winning games and start fast. To do that, you can’t shoot yourselves in the foot as much as we have done in recent weeks.
You’re hoping the penny drops and lessons will be learnt, but if they’re not then it’s my job to take them outside and put them out of their misery.
With the summer coming, there aren’t going to be many more opportunities for the lads to show us what they can do. My commitment to the football club is that we will get this club winning.
I don’t know how we’re evening competing at times, certainly with some of the decisions in that first 10 minutes. I’m thinking there that we need to just keep the score down here for the goal difference.
Ipswich find themselves 2-0 up after 10 minutes without really even doing anything. You’re kind of shell shocked at that point because everything you’ve worked on is kind of out of the window because of moments of madness.
I think Anssi would’ve saved the shot had it not hit Luke's foot and looped over him and then Dave Tutonda kicked it onto Luke and they’ve got nobody in the vicinity but we’ve kicked the ball onto our own man for an own goal.
Honest to god, my mind boggles it really does. I’ve never seen anything like this, where I live, where I existed. It happened every now and again, but at this moment, there’s nonsense from the officials and we’re not helping ourselves with the calamity of decisions in key moments. It’s got to stop.
Joey, do you regret the way you set the team up for those opening 10 minutes? Obviously it was an individual horror show but do you think you played the wrong players in wrong positions?Well, I’ve been thinking that since I came to the football club, if I’m honest with you.
There are players here who have to play because of suspensions and injuries, it’s tough.
The thinking was that Luke Leahy is our top scorer, which says a lot about the club at this moment in time. We haven’t scored in the last couple of games, so we want to get Luke up the chain, playing in that wing-back role where he scores goals for us.
We’ve got no other centre-halves, we’ve got Mark Little who’s predominantly a right-back and Jack Baldwin.
They’re the only two fit players who can play centre-half. We didn’t want to move Pablo Martinez because he did superbly for us the week before in central midfield and we haven’t got many options in there either.
Dave Tutonda is left-footed and plays left-back, we put him in there and he’s in the spot to do himself justice. For me it’s simple, these are other peoples’ players who have been recruited.
Someone has recruited them for something, they’ve seen something in them whereas I personally don’t see the same things that maybe they’re seeing.
There are some really good lads here who I think we can build on and take forward with us and then there are lads who have been begging for an opportunity, then getting them and not taking full advantage of that.
For me, is it frustrating? Yeah it is, because we want to win games and stay here but I also knew that when I came in I wasn’t coming into a fully functioning football club that was going to be at the level I expected.
That’s the process we have to follow, as frustrating as it is because it’s soul-destroying at times. I can imagine as a Rovers fan right now that it’s frustrating.
But the greatness is coming because we will win. I don’t know how we’re even competing with the level we’ve been competing with, with some of the standards of behaviour in training and stuff that’s gone on before.
I don’t know how we’re coming here and having more possession and more opportunities than Ipswich Town, based on some of the household names they’ve got.
Somehow we are competing in each game, in the midst of chaotic decisions from players who can’t make those decisions in the situation we’re in.
We’re all hands at the pump here, there aren’t many alternatives, we’ve got key players out for the season and we’re in the midst of playing lads who should be nowhere near the first-team if we’re honest.
We’re playing lads who are young and are trying to make their way in the game, so it’s tough.
Through adversity comes blessing and I’m absolutely convinced that once we get our hands on the recruitment side of it and bring the players in that I know can do the job, Bristol Rovers will be successful.
At this moment in time, I’m fighting a boxing match with two hands tied behind my back. We’re trying to make the best of it and we’re standing in the ring for 12 rounds, it hurts when you take the blows that we’ve taken.
It hurts even more when we start hitting ourselves in the manner in which we did in the first period.
On the recruitment front, you’ve got players who are out with injury obviously, but you want to change the game in the last 30 minutes and I don’t think the subs made you better.
No, I think they go on and give us effort but we didn’t get better or improve. As a manager, I have to accept that maybe they weren’t the correct substitutions to make, because we didn’t win the game.
For me, it all stops with me, I’m the manager but the only thing is that I need my players. Any players I know train correctly, any players I know is fit when the physio says they’re fit, I don’t have that at this moment in time and I’ve never known a football club like it. I’ve never known anything like this in my whole time in professional sport.
I’m lucky because I’ve played at the highest level, but even decisions about structures have been wrong and that’s why the owner has brought us in.
He’s realised that he’s made a heavy investment in the club and he wants it to get better and realised that it’s not. That’s why you take a chance on someone like me, someone who’s got the kind of volatile personality of the outside world that I have.
You’ve got to have a big set of kahunas on you to put me in charge and he’s done that and he’ll be successful for that.
You say there’s a lack of professionalism, does that stem from the staff as well as the players?You win and lose together. You find yourself in the situation you’re in because everybody isn’t good enough, that’s me included. I sit at the top of the tree, second from bottom with 39 games played isn’t good enough and as I say, when you win, you all win and when you lose, you all lose.
I’m not going to stand here and start picking out individuals, I know exactly who it is and who is going to leave and the owner is aware of that.
But first and foremost, we’ve got to get the club to safety. Now, there’s nobody else who can help us, we’ve got what we’ve got, the cards are dealt and we’ve got to make the best of it. It would’ve been easy to get done by four or five goals here.
What did they get beaten by Accy? 6-1 or something pathetic like that but credit to them, they kept fighting and digging in there. I know effort only takes you so far and then you need a bit of quality and calmness and at this moment of time, we just don’t have that.
Do you still believe you can get it done?Yeah of course. I must be barmy, absolutely barmy based on certainly the first 10 minutes.
But while there’s air in your lungs, you’ve got to fight. Yeah teams have got games in hand but you’ve got to go and get those and put points on the board.
If I had all the players I had when I came in then great, but we just lost key components. To compound that, we’ve had some mad officiating and teams that have made some insane decisions, so it’s tough.
People send you these kinds of challenges to test you and see if I’m going to be what I want to be as a coach and a manager.
This will be an experience that I draw down on in future years to come for inspiration or certainly moments where I think that the job is tough.
Losing five on the spin, trust me this is as tough as it’s got for me, that’s including junior level. I’ve won since I’ve been a kid, all I’ve done is being a part of winning teams.
The attitude will always be the same and that’s what we’ll think when we play Doncaster. There will be lads in there who will be devastated because they know their mistakes are costing the team vitally.
They don’t mean to make the mistakes, they’re good lads, they just f***** up, that’s the reality. Things aren’t at the level I want them to be, but I promise you this, on my kids’ lives, they will be by the time I leave this football club.
