Joey Barton vs Female Pundits
The gloves are off in this fight for the future of televised sport output.
'Shut up you f***ing idiots. Keep them off the tele. They’re ruining the game for everyone of us.
'It’s what happens when you force under qualified, under prepared, tokenistic people onto us.
'I will be calling them all serial killers from now on.'
The 41-year-old then renewed his attacks on Aluko, adding 'How is she even talking about Men's football. She can't even kick a ball properly. Your coverage of the game EFC last night, took it to a new low. Eni Aluko and Lucy Ward, the Fred and Rose West of football commentary.'
He later posted further abuse aimed at Aluko, comparing the former England international to Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot.
On reflection, I feel I’ve been a tad harsh on Eni Aluko by comparing her to Rose West,' Barton wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
'Had a bit of time to consider the impact of my words after @itvfootball big statement.
'She’s clearly in the Joseph Stalin/Pol Pot category. She’s murdered hundreds of thousands of football fans ears in the last few years. Meritocracy Rules!'
The ever-increasing presence of women on televised sporting coverage has certainly been a bone of contention for a lot of (mostly male) fans. It started to become more normalised back around the time of the 2018 World Cup in Russia with the likes of Alex Scott regularly appearing on the BBC’s coverage. Since then, a steady and ever-increasing number are appearing on our screens on now practically every main sport shown on live television.
Bubbling away under the surface has been murmurings of discontent from anonymous fans on social media and newspaper message boards, frightened of going public for the fear of cancellation and calls of being MISOGYNIST by the usual woke brigade. Then, boom! Like a gas boiler exploding it all has come to a head when ex-pro Joey Barton took to going off on Twitter/X with the posts highlighted above. I excerpted from the Mail because I couldn’t be bothered reading through all of his rantings. Fred and Rose West was bad enough (for those of you not familiar with those two, they were amongst the most famous serial killers ever in the country between them killing nine young women while Rose also murdered her stepdaughter). But Pol Pot and Stalin! Mass murderers whose body counts are in the millions and oversaw brutal, totalitarian regimes. A ludicrous comparison to a couple of women just talking about the footy. The response was swift. ITV issued a statement calling him ‘contemptible and shameful’. The government, looking for a bit of free, positive publicity and perhaps some respite from the seemingly permanent crisis the UK is in, piped up and showed again their anti-free speech credentials by threatening to get social media companies to kick him off their platforms. Women’s groups want him banned from football and it’s likely he’ll never manage another club again. The feminists will organise boycotts and the negative publicity for a lower-league club who Barton would most likely manage would be too toxic for them to touch him. Meaning he’s unemployable.
Looking objectively at the wider appearance of ever more women on sports broadcasts as presenters, reporters, commentators and from this furore pundits; why is the media going down this road? Is it like Barton believes woke executives looking to show how modern they are by having women on our screens? We are living in the era of diversity and inclusion which the media’s pulpit constantly remind us on a daily basis. Undoubtedly, there are far more females watching football than ever before. Therefore, could it be a sound business decision designed to appeal to the growing female audience? Could these women be used as role models for young girls? Saying to them you can make it too on to the screens of your favourite sport as an expert? All of which begs the question, should our sports broadcasts then be used for social experiments? If so, could we then be seeing a backlash from long-term fans and viewers to this unwanted change? I have yet to hear one voice, even from women, clamouring for female pundits appearing ever more on our screens.
Are women welcome in football? Of course, they are most welcome to follow their favourite teams and with the rise of women’s football, hopefully support them too. They are welcome to make a living in the game too. Kelly Cates and Gabby Logan, as daughters of former players, are uniquely placed more than a Dave Jones or Mark Pougatch, to offer the viewer a unique insight from the presenter’s chair. As a result, they are assets to Sky Sports and the BBC, their respective employers. Women touchline reporters and journalists who have a deep knowledge of their sport, deserve to have their voices heard and respected. Female officials should be able to earn opportunities to make it at the highest level if they are good enough. It’s not like we have an abundance of high-quality male officials who the women could never match. As long as they are fit enough to keep up with play and crucially, they make the right decisions, then they deserve to reach the Premier League. I can’t recall Sian Massey, for example, ever making a wrong decision during her stint in the game.
There are two positions though in my opinion where I’m afraid the line needs to be drawn. And before the shouts of MISOGYNIST get launched in my direction, hear me out. The first is lead commentator. I’m sorry but the women commentators I’ve heard simply don’t have the voices for the job. Not that they are not knowledgeable or prepared for a match, they are competent in those areas. However, commentators earn their corn for how they describe those dramatic moments. We all remember Martin Tyler’s “Aguerrooooooo” moment when Man City dramatically won the title back in 2012. If that had been a woman commentator, she would have been literally screaming down the ear of the viewer with that screechy type of voice females possess. It’s an attack on the ears, not what you want when watching a big game.
The other one and the source of Barton’s ire was the role of the pundit and co-commentator. Now personally, I believe pundits to be overrated all round. They earn far too much money for the limited role of dubious quality analysis provided. Most of them have quite poor communication skills, struggling to enunciate and tailor their words to the audience. Rio Ferdinand and Alan Shearer, to name but two examples, are really boring and vanilla in their analysis. Yet, if we are going to have them then the pundits should be someone to give the viewer that unique insight into what it’s like to be on that field in the middle of a Premier league match.
I’m an anorak when it comes to football. Sure, I only played at Sunday league standard until the age of 18 but I know my football. I’ll watch and consume 6 or 7 matches every weekend, Premier league, EFL, foreign leagues. You name it, I’ll watch it. In a lifetime of more than 30 years of watching football, I must have clocked up thousands of hours of viewership. So, I’m ready for the call, TV execs anytime you want, I’m available.
I know it’s not going to happen. The reason why is that I would have no credibility. That’s what is the most important thing as a pundit. Someone who has been there and got the experience of the highest level which those of us who are mere mortals don’t have. What the TV execs are doing is selling their viewers a pig in a poke. While charging fans more than £100 a month for a subscription. Do Lucy Ward, Karen Carney, Eni Aluko etc have knowledge of football? Undoubtedly. They have all played at the highest level of the women’s game. However, that is the problem. The woke TV execs have come to the conclusion that the two games are equal or of a similar standard, when that is just patently false. With all due respect to the women’s game, they can’t beat teenage boys, so that would place the standard of their game somewhere at male youth team level. These women have no idea of the speed, fierceness of the tackle, velocity of a shot, time available on the ball and what goes into the preparation for a high-level premier league game. In other sports like Rugby, it is even more absurd to have a women analyst when they can’t begin to comprehend what it’s like to tackle a twenty-stone man running at full pelt. It’s treating the viewer with contempt.
One thing Joey Barton is out of line on is attacking the women personally. I’ve already highlighted how stupid it was to compare them to serial killers and mass-murdering dictators. This type of rhetoric shows you have a weak argument. If you are against women pundits, you can outline your view in an eloquent way which doesn’t have to get nasty or personal. It just creates an unnecessary distraction, gets people talking only about the outlandish parts of your statement and forget about any valid points you may want to make. After all, these women are just doing a job they have been hired to do. Nobody should begrudge them from that. They have bills to pay and mouths to feed like the rest of us do. If you want to point fingers, then blame the faceless execs in personnel who decide what the make up of the broadcast should look like. Then if you are not happy, drop your subscription and walk away, without forgetting to tell them why you are walking away. The TV bigwigs will eventually have to take notice if their bottom line starts being seriously affected. By attacking them personally, it makes you look like the bad guy.
Whether this episode presents a crossroads for the future of women being pundits, is probably too early to say. Women do have a place in football but at the same time the people in charge of televised sports need to be delivering their best possible output for the viewers who are paying a small fortune. That’s why ever more top flight sport on TV is becoming more unwatchable
.