Just how will twittering bad boy Joey Barton get on with Mark Hughes?

JOEY BARTON became a father for the first time last week at the age of 29. He also scored an 11th-minute goal for QPR against Norwich last Monday afternoon. And after 36 minutes, he got sent-off for the faintest of head-butts on Bradley Johnson, who may even now be considering a career on stage. After seeing his side beaten 2-1 following his dismissal, Barton called for referees to be sued for making mistakes, twittering his 1,040,204 followers: “I wonder how long it is before a football club sues a referee for making a bad decision?” QPR's hastily arranged appeal against the red card failed and Barton is currently suspended for three games. Entirely ignoring the fact he got Arsenal’s Gervinho sent off in very similar circumstances last season, Barton ranted and tweeted all week before his club drew their FA Cup tie at MK Dons last Saturday without him. That was boss Neil Warnock's last game in charge. Curiously, on Friday, Barton was involved in a training ground bust-up with Warnock and his coaching staff. Though suspended, he railed against having to train alone, yelling: "You lot are not going to be here much longer." By Monday this week, Warnock had gone with his promoted side slipping down the table and with suspicious haste, former Wales, Manchester City and Fulham boss Mark Hughes took over yesterday. Some might say Barton played his part in Warnock's dismissal and you could certainly say Joseph Athony Barton is not your average footballer, even in these Premier League days of excess. For a start, his brother Michael Barton is serving a life sentence for the “racially motivated murder” of Anthony Walker in 2005. In May of the same year, Joey broke a 35-year-old pedestrian's leg while driving his car through Liverpool city centre at 2am. He lists world-beating boxer Ricky Hatton and Oasis singer Noel Gallagher among his close friends. He owns a race-horse called “Crying Lightning” and just last week named his newborn son Cassius. On Twitter, he quotes anybody from Friedrich Nietzsche to George Orwell but insists he is not a member of the right-wing English Defence League after an apparently damning picture with one of their leaders. Brought up in the tough Liverpool neighbourhood of Huyton by his father living in his grandparents’ home, he kicked-off his career at Manchester City and earned his first England cap while he was playing in light blue in 2007. Things began to go wrong when, on 20 May 2008 he was sentenced to six months' imprisonment for common assault and affray during an incident outside a McDonald's restaurant in Liverpool. He served 77 days. While he was inside, in July 2008, he was handed a four-month suspended sentence after admitting to assaulting team-mate Ousmane Dabo at the City training ground. Other incidents of a similar kind went unpunished. At that point, Newcastle stepped in to end his City nightmare, paying £5.8 million for him in July 2007. After four controversial years with the Magpies, he joined his current club Queens Park Rangers in August 2011. And the arguments rage on. While his side prepared for their FA Cup tie he stuck to his twitter guns, tweeting: “Those 3 points against Norwich could be difference between Premier League survival and not. That equates to a lot of money. “Someone has to set the precedent to stop the game from being ruined, maybe I'll be the first one. Can players sue referees? #Canofwormsopen. “Or a player sues another player for play-acting. Which is basically a lie and that is actionable. Whats the difference?” That was followed by a demand for a resumption of fox hunting after he spotted four of the innocent creatures during a walk in a nearby west London park. And he had time for a quick twitter war with a certain Piers Morgan. This week, Barton says, he is going to take a break from Twitter saying "it's boring the tits off me now" and worrying about "withdrawal systems". I don't expect it to last. It's too much fun for him, for us journalists, and the social networkers. Carry on Joey. But don’t expect any sympathy from rival fans, referees… or the notoriously sparky Hughes. There may be (more) trouble ahead.