Joey Barton: Return of football can unite Fleetwood and other communities

Joey Barton says this could be a final chance of the Championship for some of his Fleetwood players

Barton wants to crack on because players need normality

“It’s not the most affluent part of the world and lots of people use our facility as a meeting point, as their sense of community, whether they’re going to the games on a Saturday or they’re coming to training in our academy Monday to Friday.

“I know it isn’t safe for that yet but the baby steps for that is getting the senior teams back playing.

“Once you do that I think people’s anxiety around it will lessen and we will start to move back towards normality.”

Town are fifth in League One, just two points outside the top two, and were unbeaten in 12 games when the action stopped 10 weeks ago.

They want to play their remaining nine games, even though Town would be safely in the play-offs should final standings be decided on a points-per-game average.

Barton believes his players should have the opportunity to earn their rewards for their work this season.

He added: “For some of our players it’s that last chance saloon for playing in the league above. That might be the difference between paying their mortgage off or not. I know that shouldn’t be a consideration when people are losing loved ones and I totally get that we have to take measures to protect the NHS.

“Myself, my family, my players have observed that. We’ve done everything we can. The reason we stopped playing football in the first place was to take the strain from the NHS.

“I think we’ve done that and everybody in society has played their part. On the whole I think we’ve been a fairly well-behaved nation.

“We saw Germany go back and on TV I didn’t see any fans congregating outside the stadiums (which is a fear over behind-closed-doors games). They seemed to behave sensibly and the games seemed to go through without any problems.

“I know some people aren’t going to feel safe. There are people out there who are more anxious and more virus-aware.

“Unfortunately for us in society, to get back to some sort of normality we are going to have to take a leap of faith at some point until a vaccine comes out.”