There can’t be a Celtic fan on cyberspace who doesn’t know by now that Chris Sutton absolutely owned Derek Johnstone last night on Radio Clyde.
It was brutal, pulling no punches, but it was also forensic and right on the nose.
Few so-called journalists have ever been so utterly, completely, called out on their failings, and Johnstone has one big one.
He is, and he has always been, absolutely incapable of remaining objective, even partially, when it comes to covering events at Ibrox. Whatever he writes on other clubs and other subjects when it comes to that particular one he is perhaps the worst writer in the whole of the country, followed only by his Evening Times colleague Chris Jack, although Darryl King was once in the same league. Thankfully Scottish readers are no longer subjected to his drivel.
Johnstone is in a class of his own, though.
His lamentable slobbering over all things Rangers and Sevco is notorious.
He tipped the NewCo to win the SPL title this season, along with Hugh Keevins and a handful of others. Keevins did it because being a moron comes naturally to him now and he thinks there’s some merit in being contrary. Johnstone did it because he’s simply unable to wrap his brain around the idea that his team might not be good enough.
I get this, I suppose.
He’s a lifelong supporter and the internet is full of those people and they are joined by the same problem. It’s as if there’s a mental hurdle they just can’t get themselves over, one that lets them look at the world objectively, or at least that one small part of it as it relates to the great love affair with their club.
The problem is, those people aren’t being paid to write in a national newspaper.
They aren’t being paid to give an “unbiased” view on the radio.
And Johnstone is biased beyond belief.
Not only that, but his desire to stay on the good side of those who inhabit Ibrox means that he’s jumped ship more times than a sailor with multiple personality disorder.
He was a fanatical devotee of David Murray, then a supporter of Craig Whyte.
He was a cheerleader for Charles Green then supported the Easdale’s.
He was probably the last man in Britain who still retained the belief that Mike Ashley was good for the club.
He then eased over, completely, into the Dave King camp.
All of this is public record, and it damns him.
Even the likes of Keith Jackson turned on these guys when the writing was on the wall. Johnstone hung on there, like a leech, not wanting to upset any of them. He wrote not one article offering the slightest insight. He did no independent investigating.
He was content to be spoon-fed lies and worse, he reprinted those lies and stuck his own name under them.
Even fanzine writers and bloggers criticise their own club at times, but he is a slavering sycophant, and even that’s all well and good provided his writing appears where it belongs, in the club’s official media releases and publications.
They do not belong in a newspaper, competing with space against professionals and real writers some of whom have been second fiddle to him for way too long.
For years readers from all clubs – including the ones at Ibrox – have skipped his pieces in newspapers because there’s nothing of value in there, merely endless recitals of positivity even when the very idea of it is ridiculous.
Derek Johnstone has never broken a major story.
Indeed, the one time he tried – telling the world that Scott Brown would sign for Rangers – he failed to make good on his promise to resign if it didn’t come to pass. Not simply lacking a clue, he also lacked the integrity to do the right thing. Not so with Tosh McKinlay, who, on the same radio station, once staked his professional reputation on Celtic spending a certain sum of money in the transfer market (oh we loved you mate, you were such a crazy optimist haha) and then quit when they didn’t.
Tosh had been badly let down by someone he trusted. His source got it wrong. In Johnstone’s case, his own source had told him something so thoroughly ridiculous that he ought to have dismissed it out of hand. Instead he repeated it, live on the air; even if Hibs received a bid from another club which was higher than the one Rangers had made, they would sell the player to the Ibrox side because “that’s where he really wants to go.”
To me it has always summed Johnstone up, taking, as that does, an almost wilful ignorance of fact, logical and football economics.
It is not the only example.
Sutton nailed him on all of it, not the specifics perhaps but the broad outlines anyway.
He said things many of us have wanted to hear a journalist say to Johnstone for years.
Every single word of it was right on the money.
He is an embarrassment.
What he’s not is a journalist.
A cheerleader, a charlatan, a PR boy and a puppet for those at Ibrox; Chris knows what he’s talking about alright.