Joey Barton
I've been critical of Jurgen Klopp, certainly when I was working for talkSPORT, I didn't feel they were learning lessons.Collection: Learning
If we're going to make women's football better, as a spectator sport, to stand on its own in the marketplace, if you keep playing on the same size of pitches as men with the same size of football as men and men's rules, you're always going to have an inferior product - because men are bigger, stronger and faster than women.Collection: Women
My dad was preparing me for a life in Knowsley and Huyton, one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. A Labour heartland that becomes austerity heartland when the Tories are in power. Your options aren't the same as in Chelsea and Westminster, where my son was born.
Where I grew up, fathers would have bets on whose kids were the toughest and we were put together in the garden - almost like illegal boxing fights.
If you look at it, slow plodding midfielders tend to become good managers. Look at many great managers and they tend to be of a certain type. Pep Guardiola is the best coach but was a midfielder who had no pace and no skills. Mauricio Pochettino was of the similar profile.
For me, alcohol just has a negative effect.
You could have told me until you were blue in the face that I was on a road to destruction and the penny would not have dropped. Until, that is, I went to jail. I never thought I'd be there.
You look at the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo or Messi, whether it's the boots they wear, the haircuts they have, and you see the influence top flight footballers have over football fans - in particular young fans.
Life's too short to look back at things.
My reputation will precede me until the time I die, and for some people that can't come soon enough.
I will gladly go to jail for a month, in the name of free speech... make me a martyr.
I was at school and trying to fit in, like most kids, I didn't want to be outside the herd. Then all of a sudden I'm reading Morrissey in magazines saying he knew he was peculiar, and he embraced it. I was like 'Wow, what strength of character that must take, to be like that.'
I can find common ground with most people; I'm quite a personable character.
If I could get The Smiths back together that would top anything I could achieve on the football pitch.
At the end of the day, where I'm from, if someone open palms or slaps you or comes towards you to hit you, you don't stand around.
The red-and-white side of the north-east don't like me and they've made that clear every time I've played and managed there. But, deep down, I think there's a side to them that secretly does like me and they would one day probably want me to manage Sunderland. But they just can't say that out loud because they know I'd reject them.
I love Newcastle.
What they say about being in prison is true. That moment when the door closes, time stands still.
There's not a man in there who doesn't regret it. You're in there. You're on your own. Everyone is at their lowest ebb. Prison is a great leveller.
I went to AA meetings when I was in prison. And I hope I've gone some way to turning my life around.
Nobody wants to play only eight games for a club, you want to have more of an impact than that.
The media were quite critical of me when I was up there. That's the nature of the industry when you're Joey Barton and you go and play for Rangers who are a massive club in Scotland.
How can you get players to exert themselves physically when you're out of shape?
Unsworth makes Alan Brazil look like an athlete. I used to call him 'Chipper Unsworth' - he used to chip it and lose it every time.
I'm not bitter, I've had a great career.
I've one cap, obviously I would've loved to have got more caps. I'm a proud Englishman I would've loved to represent my country but that's not the way it transpired and I think the reality of my journey was that.
People take everything I say on Twitter too literally.
When I was younger, it was a lot more about the physical. As you get older, you understand that it's more about the mental side, both for your body and your motivations. It's the famous Smiths lyric, isn't it? 'Does the body rule the mind, or does the mind rule the body?' I feel the mind controls the body a lot more than I used to.
I don't switch off at 5 P.M. I am obsessive and compulsive about what I do, so my personal and professional lives are totally entwined.
I know myself and I know it's dangerous if I just internalise everything.
I have fought addiction to gambling and provided the FA with a medical report about my problem.
I think if the FA is truly serious about tackling the culture of gambling in football, it needs to look at its own dependence on the gambling companies, their role in football and in sports broadcasting, rather than just blaming the players who place a bet.
I am not alone in football in having a problem with gambling.
From as early as I can remember my family let me have my own pools coupon, and older members of the family would place bets for me on big races like the Grand National.
Isn't it easier to toe the line? Subsequently I have learnt that, at times, it is.
I don't need to play, financially or to prove anything to myself. I do it because I can improve.
I see pundits on the box, saying kids will watch 'Match of the Day' and copy what they see, but if you tell your children to live their lives exactly as they see footballers on the telly doing it, you must be a bit of an idiot.
We all screw up, we screw up multiple times on multiple scales, but when every decision you make is in the spotlight, a lot of responsibility comes with it.
If I'd been a balanced person I'd never have been an elite-level sportsman.
I used anger like a fuel, a propellant, to turn in to performances.
There were a lot of players more technically gifted than me but what I had was an ability to harness my anger at the world.
For 28 years, I'd never accept praise. If you said something negative I'd latch on to that for a week.
There's nothing wrong with betting if it's controlled - it's when it becomes out of control and people bet beyond their means.
I signed for a club when I was eight and went straight from school into a YTS academy. I've never lived in the real world.
At the age of 20 I was earning more money than everyone in my family. And I'd never grown up. I was still a child, it was like a Peter Pan world.
Whether you're the best footballer in the world or the best golfer or the best cricketer, you're a human being.
We're a working class game and we're lads who've come from nothing and all of a sudden are seen by society to earn an obscene amount of money.
As a player I set out to become the best player in the world. Obviously I don't live in a fantasy world, and I know that I never reached that as a player.
I think if I thought I was going to be a mediocre coach, or an average coach, I probably wouldn't do it.
As much as I didn't want to go to jail I had to accept it. It was my own doing.