Football News : Arsenal chairman plays down Barton claims

By ESPN staff

Arsenal chairman Peter Hill-Wood has laughed off Joey Barton's claim that Arsenal pushed to secure his signature.

GettyImagesJoey Barton said he had held discussions with Arsene Wenger over a move to Arsenal

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Barton joined QPR in August after Newcastle made him available on a free transfer following a series of tweets criticising the club's leadership.

He claimed on Wednesday that he held talks with Gunners boss Arsene Wenger, only for any move to fall through when Barton was sent off against Arsenal on the opening weekend of the season following a spat with Gervinho.

Barton told BBC Sport: ''If I hadn't played against Arsenal on the first day, I may have signed for them. There were a couple of conversations [with Wenger] but that's different to actually signing.

''The Gervinho incident happened and there's nothing I can do about it now. If it happened again, I'd like to think I'd deal with it differently. Things happen for a reason and there's a lesson to be learned from it. Right now, we sit above Arsenal in the table - hopefully that's the case in May.''

However, Hill-Wood has cast doubt on how genuine Wenger's interest was. "It's not something the board heard about and if it was a serious proposition I certainly would have expected us to [have heard about it]," he told the Daily Star.