If the name Joey Barton doesn’t ring a bell, that’s okay. Not everyone’s a soccer fan. Here’s a good, quick primer: he’s like the Ty Cobb of soccer, except nowhere near as good as Ty Cobb.

(C’mon, ref, no dismemberment, no foul!)

So despite a career that included a six-month prison stay after assaulting a random guy outside a McDonald’s, a four-month suspended sentence for beating up teammate Ousmane Dabo, for some reason, Bolton (the soccer club, not this guy) is thinking of bringing him back to the Premiership. For a good idea of how dirty a player Barton is, that tackle shown above is in the video after the jump. Read more…

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