The moment footballer Joey Barton is punched in the face during fight outside gay bar at 5.30am (and it took him nine and a half hours to tweet about it)

As football's most prolific Twitter user, Joey Barton normally doesn't wait long to give his views on topics ranging from Premier League matches and politics to television, music and philosophy.

But today it took him more than nine and a half hours to confirm that he had been punched in the face in a fight outside a gay bar.


The Queens Park Rangers midfielder, who was jailed in 2008 for violence, was involved in a scuffle with two men after leaving Garlands in Liverpool city centre at about 5.30am.

A picture of the incident was circulated on Twitter later in the morning - but the footballer, whose own prolific tweeting has been a frequent source of controversy, remained uncharacteristically silent until shortly after 3pm.         More