Why Joey Barton got off lightly with 18-month betting ban

Joey Barton hasn't shied from being the villain since emerging from Manchester City's youth setup in 2002, and now, 30 miles north in Burnley, his career looks set to be over after the Football Association hit him with an 18-month ban for betting breaches on Wednesday.

The 34-year-old Scouser was discovered to have made 1,260 bets between March 23, 2006, and May 13, 2016 - a spell which encompasses every team over his troubled career, with the exception of his shady sojourn at Rangers earlier this season.

Considering some of the other misdemeanours in his playing days, it's quite surprising that the strongest punishment he's received from the football authorities is for merely having a dabble down the bookies. In the past he's stubbed a lit cigarette in a Manchester City youngster's eye and beat up another teammate at the same club, the latter of which resulted in imprisonment for assault and affray - and that's just the start.

Even without taking his chequered past into consideration, and appreciating that this could mark the end of his days patrolling the midfield, Barton still appears to have been let off lightly on this occasion.

Fifteen times Barton decided to bet on his then-employer to lose a football match. Although the FA said Thursday that he was not trying to "fix" matches, according to BBC Sport, the fact that he has a say in the outcome puts his actions at grave risk of corruption. Betting on your team being defeated once can result in a ban of six months to life, so Barton was risking a punishment of at least 90 months (or seven-and-a-half years) in having punts on that eventuality. He got just 18 months.

The fact that the FA didn't discover Barton's breaches any sooner has to be questioned, and so does the fact that football leans so much on sponsorship income from betting, as the disgraced player himself pointed out in his long-winded statement. Half of the Premier League's team are sponsored by betting companies.

But that doesn't really mask the severity of Barton's flouting of the rules. The one-time England international confessed to having a gambling addiction, but a man with such a long-term alliance with the Sporting Chance Clinic and with the Professional Footballers' Association always willing to fight a player's corner, the help was there for him.

Instead, he's shown a complete disregard for the game's rules in flirting with corruption, and he deserves the 18 months and much, much more.