Not since Joey Barton was nutmegged on his Rangers league debut by Hamilton’s Ali Crawford has one of his career moves come to a more predictably disastrous conclusion.

Just as his attempt to come up here and teach us Jockos a lesson in football started with bluster and ended in spectacular failure, his latest reincarnation as the game’s answer to Laurence Fox has finally fizzed out as painfully as a cigar being put out in someone’s eye.

Who would have thought that having tens of thousands of ‘banter lads’ liking and applauding his every tweet (on their smartphones, ironically) demeaning women who happen to be involved in football – either in the men’s game as pundits or in the women’s game as players – would lead him to going further and further in search of the attention he has clearly missed since his own playing days?

READ MORE: Scotland boss Martinez Losa supports Easdon after Barton criticism

It seems though that while women not having played in men’s football should disqualify them from offering any sort of opinion on it, the same does not apply when the shoe is on the other foot. He has plenty to say about women’s football, highlighting and amplifying goalkeeping errors in particular to his 2.8m followers, yet failing to apply the same scrutiny to the many weekly howlers in the men’s game.

So it came to pass over the last few days as he followed up a tweet mocking 17-year-old Partick Thistle goalkeeper Ava Easdon on Sunday for a positional error – not offering constructive, justified criticism, as some have argued – by ‘joking’ that a woman must have been piloting the cargo ship that collided with a bridge in Baltimore, an incident that has led to the deaths of six people.

You see, women are bad drivers. Har de har.

Having tolerated – nay, fuelled - his bampottery to that point, this was a step too far even for many of his followers. Oh how they chortled along as he called women’s football ‘lesboball’ in a tweet replying to Rangers captain and Scotland star Nicola Docherty’s defence of Easdon. What a laugh it was when he referred to a wheelchair user criticising his tweets as ‘Ironside’.

But this? Well, this was the line for many. But it was always the natural conclusion to the grift.

You see, Joey – having failed to get much regular work in football management or the media of late – has a podcast to promote. He also has a fundraiser on the go to cover his legal fees after BBC presenter Jeremy Vine took exception to being called a ‘bike nonce’ by the one-time Manchester City, Newcastle United, QPR and HMP Strangeways man.

Who knows if he really believes this stuff he is saying? I'm guessing, and hoping, the persona he has around his own kids is a world away from the online character he portrays.

But he has to continue to push the boundaries to maintain his shock value and keep the attention on his Twitter feed. All of it is just his own little corner of the culture war cottage industry that thrives upon exploiting grievance and labelling any perceived threats to ‘the way things were’ as woke.

Women’s football isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. And that is absolutely fine. The women’s game clearly and quite obviously has some way to go to catch up to men’s football, and if you don’t want to watch it, then there are plenty of alternatives out there. Like, oh I don't know, wall-to-wall men's football?

I’ll admit, I don’t watch women's football regularly myself. But the fact it is being accommodated on TV schedules does not equate to it, as the likes of Barton love to say, ‘being shoved down our throats’, like rainbow laces or a St George’s flag of a slightly different hew.

It’s not like the Sky Sports Scottish Cup Final on Sunday pushed a men’s game off the box. In fact, it was put back 24 hours to allow Thistle manager Brian Graham to turn out for the Jags’ men’s team on the Saturday.

Easdon is not above criticism, nor is any player in the senior game, no matter their sex. But she is a schoolgirl that was thrust into a high-profile fixture after starting just 11 senior matches as regular number one, Megan Cunningham, was unable to play against her parent club. She has a promising future ahead of her and is an inspiration to young girls all over the country. This is apparently too much for Barton to stomach.

He’ll be peddling Covid vaccine conspiracies and hocking CBD gummies soon enough, I am sure. Let’s leave him to it. In the meantime, if women’s football isn’t your bag, then leave them to it as well.

One can only hope that Barton’s snidey remarks and the social media pile-on that he instigated will be the making of Easdon, rather than breaking her.

READ MORE: Joey Barton handed three-week suspension by Rangers over training ground bust-up

By being a positive presence and role model in Scottish football, she has already contributed more to the game here than Barton ever did. North of the border, it is he who remains the butt of the joke.