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How Do We Rate Mo Johnston?
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November 1991: Everton sell Mike Newell to Blackburn for just over £1 million. Just five days later, Everton sign a replacement paying £1.5 million for highly rated striker Mo Johnston.
Mo Johnston arrived at Everton with a big reputation. Johnston was playing in the Scotish league and had scored 46 goals in just 100 games for Rangers. Helping them to two league titles. Johnston had also played in all three of Scotland's World Cup 90 games the previous year.
I remember being quite excited by Johnston's arrival. He looked a natural goalscorer and seemed ideal to partner Peter Beardsley up front in that early 1990's Everton side.
Unfortunately his Everton career never really took off and I have only a few memories of his time at our club.
I remember him being injured quite a bit.
I remember him scoring goals for the reserves but rarely getting first team opportunities due to the form of Paul Rideout, Peter Beardsley and er... Stuart Barlow.
In fact I can only remember him scoring two goals for Everton.
Johnston got the third goal in that famous 0-3 Old Trafford victory.
And I remember Johnston and Beardsley scoring in a 2-1 home victory against Liverpool.
Mo Johnston left Everton in October 1993. His replacement Brett Angell arrived a couple of months later.
Soccernet informs me that in the two years he was with us Mo Johnston started 33 games for Everton and scored 10 goals.
Personally I can hardly remember him even though he was a favourite of mine at that time.
Does anyone else have memories of Mo Johnston at Everton? Was he any good? Surely he was better then Jo?
Dick Anderson, Posted 17/11/2009 at 09:49:37
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Was he better than Jo??? Just......I've not seen many worse than Jo in 35yrs watching!!
Johnston actually scored in 2 Goodison derbies, but I will always remember him with the Black eye and cuts to his face in Jan 93. According to the Club he had fallen over at home and hit is head on his child’s rocking horse!!
It’s pretty well known that the real reasons related to too much beer, some white powder and a fight with somebody ... allegedly. For that reason alone I was happy when he left even if he was replaced in Jan 94 by Brett Angell, who really does rank among he worst strikers we ever have had.
MoJo soon became GoMo, CoMo, in fact a complete waste of space in the end, whilst of course Mike Newell went on to a Premier League title forging a very productive partnership with Alan Shearer until Chris Sutton eventually forced him down the pecking order.
My Rangers mates still to this day can’t believe we signed him, but he wasn’t the only shite we got from Rangers — who could forget Alec Cleland who they also take the piss out of us for but thank Walter Smith for taking away.
To name him as one of the worst Everton players you have seen is either bollocks or your memory isn’t serving you as it once was. I’m 30 and I can name hundreds of dire players from the 90’s alone. I actually think he has all the attributes to be a top striker — we just need to toughen him up.
Or we could just boo him, smash his fragile confidence and fuck him back off to City? I mean we are abound with rich striking options aren't we? The likes of Vaughan (a year younger), Anichebe (also born 1988) and the Yak cannot hold a candle to Jo in terms of technique and awareness.
Don’t get me wrong it drives me mad when he flails around like Bambi on ice but let's not go overboard. He can be infuriating but I think there is some talent there. Comparing him to Mo fucking Johnson? Come on.
Yeah MoJo was a bit of a disappointment to put it mildly — but he pissed those reds off on a couple of occasions!!!
As regards the drink — well in his defence there can’t be too many players who receive threats of violence from their own fans. The controversy surrounding his move to Rangers is very often forgotten, There are Rangers fans — sorry so-called fans — I would call them bigots — who to this day refuse to go to Ibrox because they signed a Catholic!!! Thank goodness they aren’t joining the Premier League.
And before anyone accuses Celtic of the same bigotry, two of the most prominent figures in their recent history — Jock Stein & Kenny Dalglish — were Protestants. When Johnston signed for Rangers, he was the first Catholic to do so. He suffered a backlash that very few players have had to endure.
Johnston going to Rangers might have had something to do with a tax bill Rangers paid for him. So the rumours say.
Ste Lewis. Certain players will always come in for stick, that’s the way it goes. I’m not saying it’s right but after 40 years of watching Everton, I don’t think it will ever change. Ask your dad about Jim Pearson. I used to sit with my dad shocked at men shouting at their own player. Pearson still turns up at certain functions and I wonder how many of the abusers get-in on a photo opportunity. Football makes us do strange things.
Strangley enough it was only last week I dug out the season review video of the dull 1991-92 season and it hit home just how shite MoJo was for us, but a bit like Big Dunc, his best games for us came against Liverpool and Man Utd.
I do not rate Jo one iota and I think that most of his goals have come on the cheap but to compare him with the worst of the Everton strikers is frankly ridiculous, even allowing for his obvious weaknesses. You probably never saw Messrs Rod Belfitt, Bernie Wright or later Brett Angel or Stuart Barlow!
Having said that, he isn’t good enough — an opinion that I’ve held ever since first seeing him at Eastlands when he came on as substitute against us a few years ago. How anyone thought he was worth £18m is beyond me!
Unlike MoJo he is not a pisshead or a playboy and at aged 21 there is till time for him to develop. Johnston was past his prime when he joined us.
Although we got Cleland, you will find it was Howard Kendall who set that up the week before he was sacked. Cleland actually came to us when we had no Manager at all, although it was Smith who let him go on a Free Transfer. I dare say when the blessed Walter arrived 2 months later he was not particularly excited at finding Cleland waiting for him!
We got Rideout from Rangers for a mere £500k though and he gave us 4/5 years good service and the winner at Wembley.
Your story sounds more than plausible. It was an age of Tony Adams going toprison, Merson’s very public confession he too was an alcoholic, Jan Molby putting his car on its roof outside a Chester nightspot, Beagrie riding a motorbike through the plate glass lobby entrance of a Spanish Hotel on pre-season, Gazza at his worst, Bryan Robson and Peter Shilton exposing themselves in a public toilet, the list is endless.
Nowadays only John Terry’s nightclub pissing in a pint glass and parking in a disabled bay antics and his family (shoplifting mother, drug pushing father) come close!
Without Mikel Madar we’d have been relegated. He scored four goals in the last nine games, in an appalling side, which resulted in 5 priceless points. We only stayed up on goal difference remember.
I never really thought he got the thanks he deserved for that.
Think you lot are being a bit hard on barn door Barlow, don't forget he was signed from the Business Houses League in Liverpool for a pint of Mild and a pint of bitter. Also he was fast as hell, but forgot to take the ball with him most of the time.
Maybe we should loan Jo out to Grimsby & really give that Mariner’s fine something to moan about!
MoJo was a talented player who got to Everton when he was already on the slide because of alcohol. He was a big money signing (at the time) who disappointed by not providing the goals expected from him as an out and out striker.
Jo is a young, hungry and sober player who we have paid nothing for and are contributing a percentage of his wages. He is also a support striker whose best game is alongside a Yakubu or Saha. He will get as many assists as goals and provides competition and a different type of threat.
For my sins I was at Bobby Charlton’s Soccer School and as a treat we were taken to the game.
I was the only Evertonian in the group and as an excited youngster, it soon became apparent to the Manc’s sitting above me from my celebrations that I was a blue.
They then decided to spit on me from a great height!!!
But even their dreadful behaviour could not stop my joy and a swift two finger salute at the final whistle still brings a smile to my face!!
COYB!
For the entire first half of the game, Madar had scared the fuck out of Liverpool, at one point smashing a volley against the bar from the half way line. Even at the time, so glaring was the open goal he missed, that I said to my mate that that was him finished at Everton.
It didn’t matter that he’d scored a handful of hugely important goals for us, the fact that it was such a high profile sitter meant that he was doomed. Never thought he got his due or a proper crack of the whip.
MoJo was a let down, but his goals against Liverpool were more than enough for me at the time. As for Jo, I’d love to see him get it together but I just can’t see it, and there are times when he makes me pine for Ian Marshall.
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1 Posted 17/11/2009 at 14:23:24
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