It’s been a busy week, so I when I heard that Derek Johnstone had penned another of his ignorant articles in The Evening Times I put it aside until I had a little time to properly consider it. Fortunately for me there wasn’t much in it to consider. It’s the usual vacuous guff from that eejit, a guy who’s completely unable to see things from any perspective other than the one that determines fates at Ibrox on any given day.
In this piece, he accused Celtic of “rising to the bait” from King, when he trailed his ludicrous “opinions” on our titles and on how far ahead we were. But it wasn’t “bait”, King is a delusional fruitcake who genuinely believes this nonsense. He doesn’t have the intellect to try to bait us into a war of words, and if you were trying that and you possessed an ounce of common sense you wouldn’t use such specious arguments to do it.
Furthermore, nobody at Celtic Park called a press conference to refute these claims. The only people who “rose” to this were the media, in their rush for headlines. They went to individuals at Celtic Park and actually asked for their opinions. Those people dismissed this stuff as the dire, idiotic rambling of a guy who should keep his mouth shut for the sake of the embarrassment he heaps on his own club whenever he lets his trap flap open.
Dave King is a contemptible individual. Johnstone and others, like his colleague at the paper, Chris Jack, are cheerleaders for a convicted fraudster and notorious liar, and it says a lot for how low Sevco is when this is what passes for a hero.
Those two are a disgrace to journalism for the way they sycophantically accept, and then shower with praise, every word that comes out of King’s mouth. Jack’s own laughable piece last week, about The Banter Years would have been turned down by any quality fanzine in the land. “Not up to our standards mate.”
(Note to this halfwit; when we call Sevco a NewCo, when we call Rangers cheats, when we call King a low-level gangster running a football club like a crime syndicate that’s not “banter”, it’s the literal truth.)
The idea that we “rose to the bait” here is laughable. If the media didn’t treat this guy’s stupid remarks so seriously, if they hadn’t gone to Celtic for a comment, the story would have been dead inside a day.
I’ve lost count of the number of hacks who, in the days that followed, wondered whether King had “written Brendan Rodgers’ speech for him”, as if Brendan needed help from a convicted felon for that, as if our team needed more motivation than defending all three trophies and an unbeaten run.
Just wait and see, when next season is done and Brendan has become the first Celtic boss to win trebles back to back, Jack and Johnstone might well try and give King some of the credit for it, for giving our players “the proper incentive.”
Of course, by then their beloved chairman may already have packed up his pencils.
Sure as Hell the fourth manager since King “took over” will. Last week the same papers were happy to print all the Glib and Shameless Liar’s talk about “coming to power” as if he’d done it in a military coup … well, four managers and three entire teams will have come and gone since that day if this season goes as I expect, and I doubt they’ll be any further forward.
The Sevco fans will hope the next revolution is less bloody and more successful.
If there’s still a club to follow by then, of course.