Keane one of best pundits but Monday Night Football ‘coasting’

There is love for Joe Hart, Clive Tyldesley, Don Hutchison and a great many more but Monday Night Football is ‘coasting’ and being shown up elsewhere.

Before I move on and look at how football programmes are put together, I thought we should dish out some awards and sum up the top performers who we see and hear regularly.

Best presenters

There are an awful lot of them. What you need to elevate things above efficient AI robot territory is a bit of character but not too much as to be intrusive. After all, if you don’t invest your work with individuality and warmth, what’s the point? But remember, you’re not the star and there’s nothing more annoying than a presenter pretending that Southampton v Wolves is going to be a feast of brilliant football.

Everyone on all channels is at the very least competent, it’s worth saying that. But we have some that stand above the crowd.

Kelly Cates, Mark Chapman, Lynsey Hipgrave, Matt Smith, Alex Scott, Mark Pougatch, Caroline Barker and Jonathan Sutherland are all a welcome presence combining a naturally discursive style with an ability to spot humour at any time. Being natural in an unnatural situation is a real artform and these can do it really successfully while injecting a bit of character.

Some presenters, you feel, are walking a bit of a tightrope and if anything goes wrong it throws them off, but the best take it in their stride or make a joke of it. The presenter is in an unusually intimate position in your house in being front and centre, a sort of vicarious visitor. It’s therefore important that they are an affable presence. If they are not you just don’t want them in the house.

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Best pundits

The baseline for any pundit is to not say really obvious things as if they’re the wisdom of Solomon. All should ask themselves why they are there. It’s to offer insight that is not blazingly obvious to us, preferably, since it’s always an ex-player, using their playing career for additional insight not available to us mere mortals. Don’t tell us things like Mo Salah is fit for his age or any other banalities which unfortunately tend to be a default. Saying things is easy; being interesting involves much more.

There are dozens to choose from but Joe Hart is one of the best because he uses his own experience in an articulate fashion. He combines insight, knowledge and affability. I always want to hear what he has to say and that is the whole point, though you could be forgiven for sometimes thinking it isn’t with some of them.

And on the plus side he doesn’t have a grating voice, which is important. Similarly Glenn Murray and Fara Williams, both of whom talk thoughtfully. I might be in a group of one who enjoys Kris Boyd’s brooding masculinity and I, like most of us, enjoy Roy’s sometimes scathing analysis but I feel it’s sometimes on the verge of drifting into a bit of an act or mode and also is sometimes somewhat less incisive than he once was and there’s a ‘say something controversial, Roy,’ vibe at play. Wrighty brings the cuddly warmth of emotion. The people who do women’s football all make it enjoyable.

Monday Night Football is high profile but is cursed by a ‘best league in the world’ vibe and needs an injection of creative thought. It’s coasting in its previous go-to position for the weekend’s analysis.

Best commentators

Again, while some styles can infuriate stylistically and thus commit the crime of being overly intrusive and perhaps sonically unpleasant, all are well prepared and across the job. So this is a very subjective call.

Jacqui Oatley does the women’s football well. Adam Summerton, working for TNT, especially on Serie A, strikes me as getting the three-way balance between chatty co-comm interaction, facts and figures and throat-tearing passion when a goal is scored just right. I should say, it helps immeasurably if the co-comm is good and engaging. As the current crop of performers has been around for a while, he must be the first cab off the rank to lead a new establishment.

And Clive Tyldesley remains underused on mainstream channels these days but remains as good as ever and it’s still absurd that he has been superseded in his mainstream work in favour of less enjoyed and enjoyable people. Part of his attraction is shamelessly nostalgic for those times when we were all younger and had more hair, but that’s nothing but an asset. I just don’t understand why someone with such experience and knowledge that is held in such high regard isn’t given a regular profile.

I hope it isn’t ageism, but I suspect it is.

Best co-comms

Again, this is, to a degree, a subjective call and depends on what you want. A good co-comm is a tricky role, charged with adding colour and insight in real time. The worst are the ‘say-what-you-see’ merchants. It beggars belief that broadcasters still allow that to happen. The times a co-comm will say ‘and he crosses it to the far post and it’s a good finish’ are countless. We know! We can see! Do you realise you’re not on the radio?

Yet at the same time you don’t want an intrusive shouter bellowing ‘Ballon d’Or’ like Alan Partridge in a car park, or a miserablist who sounds like they don’t even want to be there. Having listened to dozens, at the moment, there is absolutely no-one to touch Don Hutchison and Andy Hinchcliffe. If you don’t watch Italian football or the EFL, maybe you’re not familiar with them.

Don’s European football knowledge is enlightening and communicated with warmth, like you’re watching the game, feet up, drink on. There’s a difference between mateyness and friendliness. Most pundits don’t know where that line is. One is less sincere than the other. Don is on the right side. There’s no grandstanding or stating of the obvious. He adds value to the broadcast and that’s what you want.

And Andy treats a lower-league game as if it’s a cup final. He brings energy, often an undervalued element to a broadcast and he explains what happened or should have happened clearly and gives us a fuller picture to the game. The greats make the broadcast more satisfying, the worst don’t and sometimes don’t even know the basics such as the rules of the game.

Best on-pitch interviewer

This job is a bit of a thankless task, having to talk to a manager who is involved in the current match, or speak to a sweat-drenched player who only converses in well-worn sentences or appears to find speaking coherently a skill he hasn’t yet mastered. Getting anything interesting out of them is often hard.

They sometimes will have to talk to another pundit, likely about something that’s already been covered, while fans make wanking gestures in the background. While plenty do it, I’ve always found Natalie Gedra copes better than most by simply being resolutely cheerful and inquisitive, though ITV’s Gabriel Clarke has put a good shift in over the years, even if he must appear at the end of a game like Banquo’s ghost to the players trudging off the pitch, a rather skeletal figure with a microphone.

Best programme

MOTD and Champions League highlights both do a job. MOTD2 is usually better, but as far as mainstream presentation of a game goes, I must say there’s only so much cliched pontificating behind a pitch-side desk or in a studio that I can tolerate, at least unless they get drenched by the sprinklers.

I increasingly feel it’s becoming unnecessary and a default that contributes little, especially an hour and a half before kick-off. Which isn’t to say I don’t want football discussion on TV but there’s plenty of room for informed, intelligent thought, not just by a raft of the same old ex-players and it needn’t involve dancing around a big screen.

I see radio took up my ‘commentators weekly summit’ suggestion on a podcast; a similar thing on TV would be welcome. They swat up for every game, why throw all that learning away after the game?

The best football programme of the lot is easily TNT’s Goals Show. You emerge from it entertained and informed. People talking about stuff they know things about. It shouldn’t be so radical, should it? Can we not have it as a regular programme, instead of just for European football?

Best European football broadcast

Sky’s German football is lean and frequently great to watch, played out to big crowds. But TNT’s Serie A is appointment viewing on a Sunday night. I would watch an Italian magazine show and love the football. Easily the most entertaining football broadcast. Consistently gripping and all without a presenter or pundits. If you never watch it, it’ll more than likely surprise you with how enjoyable it is, especially if you only watch the Premier League.

Likewise Serie B, which is only available online, is often excellent and worth your attention as long as you don’t want a show. It’s just the football and is for people who just love football and don’t need Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher to entertain them or wonder what Joe Cole thinks about anything.

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