You're cheating the fans - Barton slams the players who just don't try

Barton is currently trying to put his own controversial past behind him in the wake of his £6million summer move from Manchester City to Newcastle United.

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With the season starting today after a summer when the Premier League has been flooded by more foreign imports, the tough-tackling midfielder, capped once by England, claimed he is fed up with a culture that continues to reward mediocrity.

Barton said: 'When there are players who are cheating not only themselves but also the people they work for, then frustrations in dressing rooms are born. I don't claim to be the best player - far from it - but one thing people can never level at me is that I haven't given my utmost for whatever team I've played for.

'That started at junior level and has stayed with me. I can hold my head up high. I know that I've never cheated anybody.

'You get some players coming off the pitch saying they couldn't be bothered. Yes, literally. The training ground, too. I just look at them. There are days for us all when you maybe don't feel like giving everything you've got. But you need a strong mentality to come through those dark days.'

Barton was speaking on BBC Radio Five Live and his words may be greeted with scepticism by a football community well used to seeing the Liverpudlian in the headlines for the wrong reasons.

Only this week he appeared at Trafford Magistrates Court to plead not guilty to a charge of causing actual bodily harm after an alleged training-ground fight with Frenchman Ousmane Dabo last May. Barton, who must return to court in early October, is currently out of action with a broken foot and is not expected to make his competitive Newcastle debut for a number of weeks.

He added: 'Footballers tend to think they're centre of the universe, but they're not. This is just a game that's only a hundred or so years old. When people talk about my dark days, when I sit down and think about it - the misdemeanours I've had in the real world, with the things that go on - the things I have done are stupid and foolish.

'But they are not war crimes. That's what gets me. When footballers are on the front page and on page seven is something about soldiers dying or floods or the real tragedies in this world, I ask myself how we can justify that.'