Joey Barton sat down with the media on Wednesday ahead of the upcoming fixture with Oxford United.
Barton discussed the January transfer window, the return of Ashley Nadesan following his loan spell at Carlisle United, as well as facing The U’s this weekend.
See below the key points from Joey’s press conference at Poolfoot Farm…
On players departing this month…
“With Kyle [Dempsey], he needs to play football. He’s somebody that hasn’t started a lot of games for us. He’s got the opportunity to do that at Peterborough should he forge his way into their team, we wish him all the best and we’ll see how he is when he gets back in the summer.
“Kyle played a lot before I came to the club, he’s found himself out of the team this season and he wants to play football so I can’t stand in his way. He wants to develop and you can’t do that sitting on the bench every week.
“With Chris [Long], if you bring a player in and he doesn’t quite do what you expect him to do there’s always disappointment, but that’s football sometimes. When you recruit players, sometimes the best laid plans don’t come to fruition for all manner of different reasons and players move on.”
On the return of Ashley Nadesan…
“I said to both of them [Nadesan and Jack Sowerby] in the summer that they weren’t in a position to start games. It would’ve been easy for me to keep them both in house but it wasn’t the right thing to do for both players. They always knew they were going on loan to give themselves playing time, gain confidence to come back and play in our first team.
“For me, having Nadesan back is like having a new signing. He’s done really well on loan, he comes back here as a first team player. I had a good chat with him yesterday, and said to him that he left the building as a young player looking to get minutes, and you come back here having got them and that confidence, and he has a bit more of a manliness about him and he’s a potential starter for the weekend’s game.
“When Jack comes back he’ll be in the same boat. It’s a similar thing with Kyle to get those minutes to regain the swagger he had a couple of years ago to come back and give himself the best opportunity of playing for us.”
On keeping Lewie Coyle and other loan opportunities…
“He’s been great since he’s come here. You’ve got to use the loan market as well as you can at this level. If I could, I wouldn’t have any loan players, I’d sign them, and Lewie is one of them. Due to the loan constraints at this level, you have to use more loans than necessary.
“Tommy Spurr has gone back now so that does free up a spot for us, so we can potentially delve into the market again and see what’s out there for us.”
On this weekend’s opponents Oxford…
“They’re a good footballing side who want to play in the right way. We’ve beaten them before and if we do our level of performance we can definitely beat them again.
“The previous game against Oxford was my first away win as a manager but it’s another test that we have to be absolutely focused on and we have to be miles better than what we were in key stages on Saturday.”