Joey Barton is set to be offered a route back into Premier League football with Burnley preparing a short-term contract for the midfielder, according to theMirror.
Barton has been training with the Clarets after having his Rangers contract cancelled last month following training altercation back in September.
The 34-year-old midfielder, who helped Burnley achieve promotion to the Premier League back in May, is determined to put a difficult spell behind him and return to playing regularly.
Burnley boss Sean Dyche is now entertaining the idea of offering Barton a six-month contract once the January transfer window opens.
Barton said he is looking forward to playing football once again following another spell of negative publicity surrounding the former Manchester City and Newcastle midfielder, and hasclaimed thatmultiple clubs have already enquired about his plans for January.
I've had big clubs picking up the phone and asking what I'm doing in January," Barton said.
"It will be nice to get a pair of football boots on again and shut a few people up.�
A Joey Barton return? Thoughts Burnley fans? https://t.co/eUxL3lI3YM
Barton also spoke out about his time coming to an abrupt end at Rangers, saying he holds no grudges over how the situation was resolved - but hit out at the media for building him up to be a superstar.
I've got no issue with Rangers, [manager] Mark Warburton or anybody on the board. Life's too short to look back at things.
The media were quite critical of me when I was up there.That's the nature of the industry when you're Joey Barton and you go and play for Rangers who are a massive club in Scotland.
You're going to get criticism if you don't play fantastically well and I didn't play fantastically well there, albeit I only lasted eight games.
The difficulty for me lay in the fact that before I went up there they kind of built me into this Neymar, Messi kind of player, which I wasn't.�
"They kind of built me into this Neymar/Messi kind of player."
No way did Joey Barton actually say this?!pic.twitter.com/fJaDqLBy0w