Joey Barton putting QPR survival ahead of contract concerns please log in to view this image QPR midfielder Joey Barton is not expecting talks on his future to take place until the club knows whether they will still be in the Premier League next season. The 32-year-old is in the final season of the four-year deal he signed to join QPR from Newcastle in 2011 and has appeared 13 times in the Premier League since the club’s return to the top flight in August. Barton’s days at Loftus Road had at one time appeared numbered after he joined Marseille on a year-long loan deal in 2012 in the wake of earning a 12-match ban for violent conduct. However, he successfully re-established himself at QPR last season as the west London side returned to the Premier League via the Championship play-offs. With his contract up in the summer, Barton, while welcoming the prospect that he could now stay at QPR, said his and the club’s immediate focus had to be on Premier League survival. “I honestly don’t know. That’s probably not a decision for me to make,” Barton toldskysports.com. “My commitment to this football club is up until the end of the year. I actually didn’t think this would be a conversation I’d ever be having, I thought it was going to be a lot more cut and dried than this. “But it’s nice that we’re actually having this conversation and it’s actually a viable option for me to maybe stay at the football club. But I don’t know; I’m not really focused on that. “The main objective this year is to stabilise the club in the Premier League. That’s what I’m here to do as part of a team and that’s all I’ll be trying to do until the end of the season. After that, if there are conversations to be had then there are conversations to be had. I don’t know the landscape but, I’m surmising, you hear all manner of things going on in terms of a lot of stuff away from the football pitch at this club and I would say it would be difficult for people to make projections beyond this season. “My job is to play football and I intend to play on for a number of years. I won’t be hanging my boots up at the end of this season and doing what some other players will do. I intend to play for, health being as it is now and fitness being as it is now, for at least another four or five years. “I’m enjoying my football, I’m happy in my life, everything’s going as well as can be, and I’m looking forward to the future. If that’s at QPR, great, and that’ll be a conversation I have in the summer once we know our destiny.” Having spent two seasons away from the Premier League, the ex-Manchester City and Newcastle player admits he wants to continue playing in the division. “I want to play in the Premier League, I’ve missed it,” said Barton, who recently joined anEA SPORTS FIFA 15 panel to debate their Team of the Year. “Being in France for a year was a great experience and being in the Championship was an experience I think I’m famously quoted as saying I didn’t really want to experience and had no intention of experiencing. I did it with Newcastle and it was a lot different because we won the league relatively easily, and then I did it the tough way [with QPR]. “So I’ve now got a different experience which will hold me in good stead for the future. I’ve been in the Championship twice and got out of it and that is not an easy thing to do. To be part of two teams and two experiences like that will stay with us. The play-off final will always be with me, regards of what happens at QPR and what happened before. That experience and something to happen like that on the scale it happened is an incredible moment in football.” EA SPORTS has teamed up Rio Ferdinand, Kyle Walker, Joey Barton and the strongest player in FIFA 15, Adebayo Akinfenwa, to have their say on who should make this year’s Team of the Year for FIFA 15 Ultimate Team. Watch them debate their World XI at youtube.com/easportsfifa
