Joey Barton handed 12-match ban

QPR midfielder Joey Barton has been given a £75,000 fine and a 12-match ban for an incident in the team’s final fixture of the season.

The match against Manchester City was a nail-biting end to the 2011-12 Premiership race, which was clinched by the Blues with two late goals.

However, Barton marred the event with an elbow on Carlos Tevez, one of City’s key strikers, for which he received a red card.

As he left the field, he was involved in further aggressive confrontations with Sergio Aguero and Vincent Kompany.

The initial red card carries an automatic three-match suspension for violent conduct, plus an additional missed fixture as it was Barton’s second of the campaign.

An additional eight suspensions were added by the FA for the incidents with Aguero and Kompany – the second of which Barton denied.

Following a review by the FA’s independent regulatory commission, the charges were all upheld, and the total 12-match ban stands for the opening fixtures of the 2012-13 season.

Barton did not help his case by taking to microblogging site Twitter to try and explain his actions.

He wrote on May 13th: “The head was never gone at any stage, once I’d been sent off, one of our players suggested I should try to take 1 of theirs with me…”

It seems this may have been the rationale behind antagonising the other Manchester City players as he headed for the tunnel, in an attempt to have further red cards handed out.

However, the attempt failed, and City went on to overturn a 2-1 scoreline and eventually win 3-2 to clinch the Premier League title.

Until Edin Dzeko and Sergio Aguero – who remained on the pitch despite his confrontation with Barton – slotted in injury-time goals, Manchester United were looking like the favourites to claim the title, despite lagging on goal difference going into the final game.

But City held on and overturned the odds to lift the trophy for the first time in 44 years.