He says: "Part of me thinks, 'Is it self-sabotage? Am I acting the villain because people think I'm a villain?" He makes no excuses. But there were circumstances. He'd promised the Rangers owners: "You won't go down if you sign me." Trolls were tweeting about relegation. QPR's fans "didn't particularly like me", and he was locked in a poisonous relationship with his manager, Mark Hughes.
He says, "Tevez punched me. It was the spark that lit the bonfire. But the bonfire was already piled up and soaked in petrol. I was having a lot of problems. I'd started drinking again, which few people know, backsliding after a couple of years on the wagon. I was really struggling. Personally and professionally all was not what it seemed.
[...]
He can't imagine rejoining QPR. "The analogy is, I pulled the baseball bat out through my own stupidity. The FA took it and beat me. I thought QPR would, rightly, chastise me but they picked the bat off the ground and continued the beating. I was no longer the marquee signing. I was a commodity whose stock had dwindled. You get a gut feeling for things. I walked into QPR and straightaway thought, 'this isn't right'. I'd left a club I loved, Newcastle, and I knew I'd come for money and think I was always uneasy from that moment on. I'd sold out a bit.
"On my first captain's list was 'six plugs' because the players- at a Premier League club - were plugging up the baths with tissue paper. Tinpot stuff. They were paying people massive money but not spending on the basics."
He goes on in this vein but later asks for a lacerating torrent about Hughes to be off the record. Progress for Joey.
He says, "Tevez punched me. It was the spark that lit the bonfire. But the bonfire was already piled up and soaked in petrol. I was having a lot of problems. I'd started drinking again, which few people know, backsliding after a couple of years on the wagon. I was really struggling. Personally and professionally all was not what it seemed.
[...]
He can't imagine rejoining QPR. "The analogy is, I pulled the baseball bat out through my own stupidity. The FA took it and beat me. I thought QPR would, rightly, chastise me but they picked the bat off the ground and continued the beating. I was no longer the marquee signing. I was a commodity whose stock had dwindled. You get a gut feeling for things. I walked into QPR and straightaway thought, 'this isn't right'. I'd left a club I loved, Newcastle, and I knew I'd come for money and think I was always uneasy from that moment on. I'd sold out a bit.
"On my first captain's list was 'six plugs' because the players- at a Premier League club - were plugging up the baths with tissue paper. Tinpot stuff. They were paying people massive money but not spending on the basics."
He goes on in this vein but later asks for a lacerating torrent about Hughes to be off the record. Progress for Joey.
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