I WOULD love to have been a fly on the wall in the QPR dressing room when Neil Warnock took Joey Barton to task over his comments about team-mate Adel Taarabt.

Warnock reckons Barton was “out of order” when, in a radio interview, he said could not understand all the fuss over the Morocco international.

Typically controversial, the former Newcastle and Manchester City midfielder said Taarabt needed to buck up his ideas and claimed he had yet to see the so-called “genius” that has made him a fans’ favourite at Loftus Road.

Warnock did his best to play down the issue when he appeared on ESPN’s Between the Lines programme on Monday night, suggesting Barton’s comments might have been misunderstood or misinterpreted, until it was pointed out that they were made on radio.

But when the penny dropped he admitted: “What he is saying about Adel I think is a little bit out of order.”

I can’t see the QPR boss being quite so diplomatic in the privacy of the dressing room, nor can I imagine Barton will back down or take back what he has said.

And there in the middle of it all was Taarabt – a player whom Warnock referred to as a “law unto himself”

after he walked out on Rangers and got the bus home after being substituted during the 6-0 defeat by Fulham.