Had to put up with him again on ITV4 last night. In all the matches he's ever been involved with I've yet to hear one insightful comment, whereas he talks utter rubbish almost all the time. The pits last night was the second half offside decision before Cudicini fouled the Rovers player, where even with the help of a TV replay he managed not to notice that the officials had got it exactly right. What on earth do ITV see in him?
Pat Nevin is worse if you ask me. His "insightful" comments exist, the problem is that most of them are completely untrue.
The commentary last night was absolutely woeful - I thought that myself too a few times. I just pity any kids watching who did not know enough to realise the crap that was coming out of their mouths and the blatant things that were missed. Half the time once he decided to start naming who was on the ball he didn't even get that right and the "analysis" of several incidents including the Cudicini one were basically laughable. How did neither of them notice when the flag went up?! This is their job for Christ's sake! ITV - there to remind us that as bad as the BBC is there's always way, way lower depths that can be plumbed. Someone I know who works in telly just calls ITV **** For Arseholes. And indeed it is.
Yep, the Cudicini incident was embarrassing. However, I'm grateful that ITV4 and Channel 5 cover Europa league games so comprehensively. I remember when I couldn't even see highlights, let alone full coverage of AC Milan v Spurs -San Siro in 72. One of our greatest ever European nights and it got about 30 seconds on Football Focus on Saturday lunchtime, so today's coverage is absolute heaven to me. But yes, some of it could be done better.
Ray "The sycophant" Wilkins is the one I can't stand. He's got his tongue so far up Chelsea's arse, that all that comes out of his mouth, is ****!
He did our AC game last year didn't he? Or one of the CL ones anyway. After the 40th time he said "Spurs are defending these corners well" (we were defending them "the Spurs way", eg - not well) i turned him off and sat in silence
He's just useless and what makes me laugh is his beloved Chelsea sacked him, never gave a proper reason as to why (unless I missed it) and he still kisses their ars*s as if he's one of their top earners! I think we should make a petition to get comedians to be commentators, imagine the likes of Peter Kay, Lee Evans, Michael Mcintyre etc commentating on games! Football would become twice as good to watch at home!
The nightmare partnership would have to be Lawrenson and Tyldsley - they don't add to the game, but their constant (and usually unjustified) snide comments sure take away from it.
Mick McCarthy doing World Cup commentary and Chris Coleman who used to do quite a lot on Sky were my least favourites.
Marty Feldman once did a sketch on this, with him as a BBC commentator referring to 'greasy dagos' and the like. No way, would that sketch be written or aired now. There's reference to it here https://www.mailtalk.ac.uk/cgi-bin/...235250=:34291&T=text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Iremember it GH. It was hilarious. The referee started as Swiss-German, then went to German - and finally, to That Nazi Swine, as decisions went against the brave English lads. As you say, not much chance of that getting aired on our wonderfully P.C. television, nowadays.
I used to get so annoyed listening to the likes of Andy Gray, Lawro and Wilkins commentating on our matches, but I now find their extreme anti-Spurs slant on games absolutely hilarious. It's as though it would physically hurt them to say anything positive about us. And I love it when we trounce the other side, so that biased gits are forced to admit that we've played really well.
Yep NSIS, it was a great sketch, and helped me understand the nature of the xenophobic stuff we listened to at the time. As with Alf Garnett I was laughing along with, as well as at him, at the same time. Very different era, and a lot of very funny stuff that has now, for good or bad, been packed away with the dinosaurs I had a David Coleman book of Football one year for Xmas, it was about 1963, and had some questions and answers with fans. Someone seriously wrote, I kid you not, 'why do commentators bother telling us the foreign names in international and European matches, we can't pronounce or understand them anyway'. (Or words to that effect) The answer came, explaining it was the commentators job, and no-one would expect us to announce 'Swan Lake, written by a Russian' or 'Some German's 5th Symphony' Those were the days my friend
Gray was the worst for me, him and Keys together just didn't seem to like us. Jamie Redknapp was another one, I used to put him on mute straightaway, till his Dad joined and suddenly he was our friend.
