Burnley midfielder Joey Barton has suggested that he will retire from football should he fail in an appeal to reduce the length of his 18-month suspension for betting offences.
On Wednesday, the Football Association announced that the 34-year-old had been punished for placing 1,260 bets on football matches between 2006 and 2016 and as it stands, he faces being sidelined until October 2018.
However, Barton has indicated that he will end his playing career should he not succeed in reducing the severity of his punishment.
In a statement, he said: "The FA have announced I am banned from all football for 18 months and fined £30,000 and costs for offences against The FA's Betting Rules.
"I am very disappointed at the harshness of the sanction. The decision effectively forces me into an early retirement from playing football. To be clear from the outset here this is not match fixing and at no point in any of this is my integrity in question.
"A ban of 18 months is longer than several bans handed to players who played in matches where they bet for their team to lose and – unlike me – were found to have had an ability to influence the games. The only players to be banned for 12 months or longer bet against their own teams and played in the matches in which they placed those bets. Players who did not play in the matches they placed the bets in have never been banned for longer than 6 months. I feel the ban is excessive in this context."
The FA has revealed that it will announce written reasons for the ban in due course.
Darren Plant
