We signed him as our "marquie" signing to show we meant business after TF arrived in an attempt to secure other bigger names. There was talk of either Barton or Parker, but Parker was always Spurs bound so Joey it was. Think Young signed before Joey if I'm not mistaken. But it meant players like Ferdinand and SWP signed, so the answer to the question would be an easy one with SWP in the equation Higher.
.... and if this other mystical signing had turned out to be as good as SWP has been this season?? Which isn't beyond the realms of possibility. I've got to admit as I ponder this more I think the answer is possibly lower. Without doubt post red card Joey's actions were horrendous BUT if he hadn't have lost it, how would we have viewed the red card and the contribution of Joey Barton over the season. Personally I think we would feel that we were robbed by that red card, it really wasn't all that bad, think JB should have been smarter but you could apply the same logic to all of the red cards this year and we have felt pretty hard done by on most of them. So trying not to have my vision blurred by the post red card "losing it" moment and trying to look at things with a clear head, my feeling is JB was one of the players instrumental in getting us through the last 10games and securing an amount of points that took us to safety. Yes he does seem like a divisive character in the dressing room but personally I think Neil Warnock was far more instrumental in losing the dressing room. To me the writing was on the wall for NW calling Tarore an idiot on national tv after the Villa game, would you see Fergie or Wenger speak of a young player like that especially on the Sunday marque game of the week? Then the next week we lost 6-0 to Fulham, coincidence? In reality footballers like Joey are just commodities to a club like QPR, So thanks for doing a job for us this year Joey, now its time to jog on.
