How hard will FA punish Barton?
November 4, 2008 - by admin - 
Before taking action against Newcastle’s Joe Barton, FA awaits referee Bennet’s report from the match.
During the win over Aston Villa, Barton seemed to hit Gabriel Agbonlahor’s face but didn’t get any punishment.
“It will be a question of whether the referee saw it and dealt with it at the time,” said an FA spokesman.
“If he didn’t, the procedure would be to get the footage of the incident and ask the referee for his views.”
It was a two part incident. The first part came after that the midfielder (who’s now playing again after the ban and prison sentence) had been penalised for a foul but referee Bennet didn’t act to the push on Agbonlahor.
Barton was also booked for a late second half challenge on Aston Villa defender Luke Young.
But Newcastle have claimed that poor Barton is being very unfairly treated.
Coach Chris Hughton said: “Any incident regarding Joey is going to be blown up twice as much as it’s going to be with any other player.
“I wasn’t aware of any incident with Joey at all.”
In July, The jailbird Barton was released after serving two months of a six-month sentence for assault and affray in Liverpool.
The “Mr Nice Guy” Newcastle player was banned for six games by the FA after he assaulted his former team-mate Ousmane Dabo at the training ground!
At a personal hearing Barton was fined £25,000 and will be suspended for another 6 games when he steps out of line again in the future.
He is backed by Hughton (who had to take the post-match press conference because manager Joe Kinnear had lost his voice).
“There wasn’t anything said in the changing room afterwards, certainly not to my knowledge,” added Hughton.
“All we can ask of Joey is to put in the performances he has done for us since he has been back. He is a very short way into his period back with us. All of those things, he is aware of.”
Villa boss Martin O’Neill also played down the incident, although Agbonlahor had mentioned it.
He said: “That’s for other people to make the decision. The referee and linesman, whatever they saw - or didn’t see, as the case may be, that’s up to them.”
