Joey Barton's tweets after Alex Ferguson's bold claim about Steven Gerrard

In the eyes of most, Steven Gerrard is one of the greatest midfielders to have played the game.

For well over a decade at Liverpool, the current Aston Villa manager performed to a world-class standard.

Sure, he never got his hands on the Premier League trophy, but that doesn’t mean Gerrard isn’t up there among the very best to have played in the division.

After all, the 41-year-old was named in the PFA Team of the Year on no fewer than eight occasions.

You’ll be hard pushed to find many people in football who don’t rate Gerrard, although one person that falls into that category is none other than Sir Alex Ferguson.

The Manchester United legend famously said in his rather controversial 2013 autobiography: “I’m one of the few who felt Gerrard was not a top, top player.”

A bold claim, right? Unsurprisingly, when Fergie’s comments about Gerrard became known to the public, they received a fair amount of backlash.

Former Manchester City midfielder Joey Barton, who is well-known for being outspoken, even took to Twitter to make his feelings about them known to the public.

As usual, Barton didn’t hold back one bit and made it obvious that he thought Fergie was talking absolute nonsense.

To be fair to him, that is understandable given that 99% of people recognise Gerrard as an all-time great.

So how can a football visionary like Fergie not see that, eh? Barton then revealed on Twitter that in his humble opinion, Gerrard was a better footballer than former United captain, Roy Keane.

An interesting take, one which will completely divide a room full of football lovers.

Keane was everything you could want in a midfielder at United. He was a born leader, he could run the show in the middle of the park and he even chipped in with