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Joey Barton looked around the away dressing room at Celtic Park and saw his manager shaking like a leaf. Only he describes it a little more colourfully.

There and then he knew his stay in Scotland would be short-term.

Little did he know it would last only 72 hours longer and he would gone, like he’d arrived, in a blaze of publicity.

Barton, never the shy and retiring type, believed he was coming north in summer of 2016 to prove he was the best player in the country and to spearhead newly-promoted Rangers’ bid to end the dominance Celtic had enjoyed while the Ibrox club was working its way back up through the divisions.

Eight games later he was gone. And he has remained uncharacteristically quiet about giving his side of the story.

Until now. The Scouser, now manager of Fleetwood, gives his side of a story where nobody emerges with credit. And certainly not Mark Warburton, the Rangers manager at the time.

Barton, in an interview with the Football CFB podcast, chronicles his controversial career and doesn’t hold back in his assessment of why it went so badly wrong at Rangers four years ago.

(Image: SNS Group)

An argument over Warburton’s desire to sign Joleon Lescott, whom Barton believed had “grassed” him to the FA after his sending off for QPR against Manchester City four years earlier, had fractured an already shaky relationship with the Ibrox boss but after a 5-1 hammering by Celtic at Parkhead a week later, it was over.

Barton said: “We’re playing Celtic at Celtic Park. I’ve said I’m going to be the best player in Scotland and all eyes are on me and Scott Brown.

“We did team shape on Thursday. Andy Halliday was having something to eat later that night and he says, ‘I’m not playing tomorrow’.

“He was in the team shape on the Thursday, so we’ve had all this preparation, so why is he changing the team on the Friday? We found out on the Saturday that Warbs was concerned the team had been leaked, so he decided to change it.

“But he didn’t tell Andy – he texted him, despite us all being in the hotel.

“Andy’s a mad Rangers man and a good lad. He was clearly upset. It was just amateur hour everywhere.

“We turn up at the stadium and run the gauntlet of the Celtic fans. I know we’re going to lose the game because of the team selection. It’s me, Josh Windass and Niko Kranjcar in centre midfield against Scott Brown, Nir Bitton and Callum McGregor.

“Josh and Niko are good players but not ones you really want in the trenches with you at Parkhead. You want warhorses.

“I knew all the sh** I was going to get because we weren’t winning that game. Before the game Kenny Miller is having a go. Andy’s trying to galvanise the troops. I look to my right and there’s Warburton shaking.

“He was supposed to be the leader and he’s shaking like a dog having a sh**.

“I remember thinking, ‘Don’t get sent off’. My mindset was not about winning. It was not getting sent off.”

There was a sending-off. Philippe Senderos was red-carded on his debut at 3-1 and according to Barton, Warburton made a tactical switch that allowed Celtic to go on and rout them.

He added: “Senderos got sent off and Warbs put me as the middle man of a back three with Lee Wallace and Tav on either side of me. Tav can’t defend for toffee, everybody knows that.

“Wallace ducked out of a header at Dundee and I dug him out for it, saying, ‘If you’re captain of Rangers you can’t do that. Don’t do that again’.

“Warbs didn’t like that but Lee, to be fair, accepted it. We got overrun and lost 5-1 to Celtic. I thought we could use that as a reality check.

“On Sunday, Warbs phoned me and asked me to have breakfast with him. I left that thinking he was in over his head.

“On Monday I went in thinking, ‘This is Ground Zero – day one when Rangers rebuild themselves.

“There was a real intense training session. Miller, Halliday, Wallace were hurt by the result and it was right on the edge of going over – but that’s how you should train at elite level.

“Me and Andy were on opposite teams. He was pissed off at being left out and I was pissed off with the result.

“We had a couple of ding-dongs and at one point lads got in between us but it was never going to be a dust-up. Instead of letting it go on, Warbs stopped the session and had a shooting session. I walked off, thinking, ‘This is a f***ing waste of my time’.

“Stuff was said that doesn’t cover me, Mark or Davie (Weir) in glory and should remain behind closed doors but we had a fundamental disagreement about where the team and club was going.

“I knew when things were being said that it was me or him who would be going. I was cool with that. It needed resolving.

“I should have left a week earlier but if I’d done that before the Celtic game, people would have said I was a sh**bag.

“I was made the scapegoat but went back to Burnley where I was so de-conditioned by the standard of Rangers’ training that I had to train like crazy to get back up to Premier League standard.

“But I got back and showed I was a Premier League player.”