Just turned on to watch the legendary performance. Over the years good pundits, Hanson, then boring Shearer, amusing Micah Richards. But tonight WTF...... Rooney. What? I leave now with disbelief before I get angry and belittle illiterate scousers, whoops too late
I remember Lineker's intial MOTD appearances being as comfortable viewing as a hostage video highlight reel - turned into a great broadcaster. But Rooney's been floating around on the pundit scene like an corn plaster for a while, only becoming slightly more confident in delivering his bland "insights." 'Chappers' set him up with a question regards Alex Isak's wicked game of trying to force a move and not train - clearly to relate to Rooney's own experience of wanting to leave Man Utd. Wazzer started to buffer and repeat "but you have to go about it the right way!" three times, as if some sort of "safe phrase," prompting Shearer to step in.
Lineker was divisive but the drop in quality from Lineker - Shearer - Richards to Chapman - Shearer - Rooney was quite undeniable. Also it could just be me but it felt like the actual highlights were much shorter.
Yep. When the news of GLs departure was broken the BBC also said they were angling for more expert analysis with the new format. That means less actual football, on a football show.
They are also now putting the highlights on the bbc website ahead of the MOTD broadcast. I can’t see myself tuning in for MOTD at all. I do disagree about Micah Richards too, I don’t find him amusing, if anything I find him quite exhausting / tiresome.
Seems pretty obvious that the Beeb don’t see a long term future for MOTD now that Lineker has gone, and are deliberately making it less popular to have an excuse to get rid.
I haven't watched MOTD for years. I always just watch the few minute highlight videos on youtube of any match that looked like it might have been interesting.
Yep, Sky put them up about 20 mins after FT. Now with BBC also doing it, you’re choosing MOTD specifically to see what Wayne Rooney, Danny Murphy etc think about the game? Can’t see many people wanting that!
I doubt they're deliberately making it less popular. They only showed a few minutes of a lot of matches anyway and now you can see highlights online so soon after games finish I think the format as it was (a few minutes of highlights and a very brief discussion of each match, all shown hours after all the matches have finished) is basically doomed and they're scrambling to save it. Their two choices are to show longer highlights or do more in-depth analysis. Good analysis could be a way to generate interest, I remember Gary Neville doing some excellent longer bits of analysis for Sky at points, but I don't know if they have the right people available to produce something worth watching.
Like Soccer Saturday it’s outdated I think. There is so much good analysis out there on places like YouTube that I don’t know if traditional tv slots can compete as these YouTube channels are not constrained by timeslots or giving 5 mins to certain teams/ games if they don’t want to. Personally I haven’t watched/listened to pundits for a few years, if Saints are on tv I’ll just turn on at kick off and zone out during half time. Not really interested in anything they have to say but id imagine im in a minority for that one
I agree, the pundits talk an awful lot of bullsh*t, usually as a result of never having watched the teams for any length of time.
They also only have a passing interest in any but the biggest of clubs, so what they say tends to be shallow soundbites.
All I ever want from pundits is incisive comments about things that aren’t blatantly obvious and consistency. I’m sick to the back teeth with pundits and co-commentators who say “he went down too easily” and “he was entitled to go down” depending on the player or team he is talking about. Hinchcliffe on Sunday was so hypocritical and was very much the above and at least once in the game I heard him say “there wasn’t enough contact for that to be a foul” when a Saints player went down and he then later said (after a Welington tackle on the touch line when an Ipswich player went down as if sniped from the stands) “not sure if there was any contact but even if it was only slight it would be a foul”.
Big club bias rules it all and so many of the pundits have links to all the same clubs. It’s the prem circus.
