Should Newcastle give Joey Barton a second chance? In fact, is it not or a fourth or fifth chance for a man who seems determined to let his temper ruin his life? Have Newcastle made a moral stance by offering redemption? Or have they got a still useful player who they could never have sold on reduced terms?

I'm not sure Newcastle should even be in the position of redeemer. Should Barton have been given a suspended sentence for a crime committed whilst on bail, at a trial conducted when he was in jail?

Moral questions, questions about the criminal justice system, questions about the greed of football. It seems nothing in Barton's strange career has a simple answer.

On one level he has served his time, accepted his punishment and has every right to get on with his life. By standing by him, Newcastle have given him a chance that is denied most people leaving prison. Society, then, should applaud the club for showing that our courts and prisons don't just swallow up young men and then spit them back out for society to deal with. A football club as a worthy moral entity - not something you would normally hear.

On another level, Barton has a very public and very long list of serious misdemeanours. He's not shown in the past an ability to change. His is the common tale of the school bully graduating to the pub brawls, the Saturday night violence, the brutal, callous and random acts of violence.

Violence begets violence and Barton may only be a victim of his environment. We can either use that fact to applaud Newcastle's apparent willingness to see past the macho stupidity of his actions, or we can say that other men don't get that second chance and that Barton, by definition of his job an apparent role model, does not deserve that chance either.

But maybe there is another level, another interpretation of events. Maybe by taking Barton back, Newcastle are only now stepping in and offering the player something that football should have done years ago.

Picture Barton, the football prodigy with a temper, encouraged, protected, worshipped and paid millions. Barton, getting his own way, never shown how to grow up, never given professional help. A dream lifestyle for sure but, despite the riches, no more help in dealing with his psychological problems, his background, than a brickie or an office clerk.

If we look at the Barton case like that, is he so different from, say, George Best whose apparent lack of regret couldn't disguise an agonising death from a disease that could, perhaps, have been treated if Manchester United had only had a bit more foresight in the early days?

Or Gazza, the man who gave Barton and his colleagues this incredible life, but who was so badly misadvised throughout his career, from the boredom of Rome to the drinking club at Ibrox, that his current plight is as much a map of football's failings as it is a symbol of his own self-destruction.

We all have to be responsible for our actions. But does football, with the money that pumps through it, ask young men to deal with an incredibly artificial situation, give them riches and lifestyles that they are not mature enough to deal with? When the inevitable problems surface, they are ignored. Then, when someone like Barton reaches a certain point, football simply turns its back, claiming there is no room in the game for the monsters it creates.

So Newcastle and Joey Barton are a complex situation. The bloated football club and the borderline psychotic who thought he was untouchable. The misguided young man who has served his sentence and the employer offering him the chance for rehabilitation. A society that creates both millionaire footballers and yet another generation of angry, ill-prepared young men and then expects never the twain shall meet.

There are no easy answers in the Barton case. My own view, for what it's worth, is that he is lucky to get another chance and that this will be his last shot at redemption. But for all that, Joey Barton probably says more about football, and society at large, than we are comfortable hearing.