Former Rangers midfielder Joey Barton has described Scotland as a footballing backwater during a Twitter spat with a journalist this afternoon.

After being handed an 18-month ban for placing 1,260 bets on football matches or competitions from 2006 to 2016, Barton has been focusing more on his punditry career and is now a regular morning co-host on talkSPORT radio.

And as you’d probably expect, the 35-year-old former Man City, Newcastle and QPR man has been his usual outspoken self on social media today, and appeared to aim a dig at the standard of the game in Scotland – whilst apparently failing to realise the irony of the fact he failed to make it in the Scottish Premiership:

Ah ‘Celtic Tom’ I wondered when you’d come crawl back out from under that rock.

Who paid you to say that? Dermot? Brendan? #Puppet https://t.co/iaKpugIW1B

— Joey Barton (@Joey7Barton) December 4, 2017

Great this Twitter. One minute your given stick by a puppet journo in a footballing back water. Then someone who can’t get a job in the Media and a fella whose internet search history would make Damian Green embarrassed. Couldn’t make it up. Brilliant ?

— Joey Barton (@Joey7Barton) December 4, 2017

Barton arrived at Rangers back in the summer of 2016 as a big-name signing but failed to live up to his big billing, and was soon sent packing after a fallout with Mark Warburton.

His final match in a Rangers shirt was a 5-1 hammering at the hands of bitter rivals Celtic.

He’s always got plenty to say, but should Joey Barton really be slagging off the standard of a league he failed miserably in? What do you think?

Let us know in the comments section below…