AS Joey Barton walked through the players’ entrance underneath the main stand at Anfield on Sunday he was in no mood to stop and talk about his latest misdemeanour.

“Not today, sorry,” was his quick response to a request for an interview moments after his dressing room bust-up with Alan Shearer.

Sorry, apparently, is the hardest word, but in Barton’s case it is one word that has rolled regularly off his tongue. This time, however, it would seem an apology is not what Newcastle United want.

And who can blame them?

Time and time again Barton has let himself down, and while Newcastle may have stood by him when he was jailed for six months after admitting assault and affray 12 months ago, this time has to be different.

After “baring his soul” to try to right the many wrongs of the last few years, there was an argument that Barton deserved another chance.

It is difficult to imagine anyone outside of the Sporting Chance clinic, the facility that tried to help him through his problems, fighting from the same corner now. Barton’s career is in ruin – where now?

With the boardroom and the backroom staff at Newcastle united in the belief that the Premier League’s most controversial bad boy should never play for them again, it would be nice to imagine that few others will give him yet another chance.

The likelihood is, though, that by the start of next season he will be training at a new club and looking ahead to a “fresh start”.

Another one.

It went wrong for him at Manchester City, it hasn’t worked out at St James’ Park, and the reality is that his next employers will encounter similar problems.

During his dressing room bust-up with Alan Shearer, it is alleged that Barton claimed he was the best player in the Newcastle team. Annoyingly, he could actually have a point.

But it doesn’t matter how much talent a player has if he can snap every time something doesn’t go his way.

While Michael Owen’s earnings during four years on Tyneside have been brought into question because of his injuries, Barton can hardly justify his reputed £60,000-a-week contract has been well earned.

His appearance at Anfield was only his ninth of the season and to have had that outing end prematurely with a reckless and needless two-footed lunge on Xabi Alonso was typical.

But in Shearer, Barton has verbally attacked the wrong man. Being suspended indefinitely on full pay may be the shortterm solution. Eradicating Barton from the pay-roll completely has to be the next step.

When the 26-year-old was sentenced to jail a year ago this month, calls for Newcastle to sack the midfielder went unfulfilled.

On this occasion, however, it is difficult to imagine that Newcastle owner Mike Ashley and Shearer will be so lenient.

Sacking maybe off the agenda, but they will attempt at the first opportunity to move him on – unfortunately he will be back.

Rangers, Blackburn, Bolton or Birmingham?

Wherever he ends up, it is difficult to imagine things will change.