Joey Barton was one of the guests on this week's A League Of Their Own on Sky One. The former Rangers player was asked by host James Corden about the methods managers had used during his career to get him fired up for games.
Barton said that in the modern game, managers should not have to do that. He went on to tell a story about a confrontation with Mark Hughes - someone he says that he 'fuckin' despised' - which resulted from the then QPR manager trying to 'get stuck into him'.
One high-profile manager, I followed him into his office, locked the door on him and said, 'Come on let's just sort this out, me and you. The only way to sort this out is me and you have a fight 'cause I hate you so much and you hate me, let's just sort it out and whoever walks out, walks out and we get on with it.'
During his career, Hughes built a reputation of never shirking from physical confrontation. His head remained cool though during the tête-à-tête with Barton.
No, no, no. He was like, 'What do you mean?' I said: 'You're treating my like a knobhead, you think I'm a knobhead. Because I've been nice to you, you think that's a weakness when it's not. If you want, we'll sort this out now.'
He was like, 'I obviously can't fight you, I'm the manager of the football club', and I was like, 'Oh shit, yeah, actually you can't'.
So we had to kind of de-escalate it and open the door.
