I agree with all of the above suggestions and cant believe Andy Townsend hasnt been mentioned. Gale is probably the worst, Durham just spews clueless nonsense in order to wind fans up and get them to phone into his 4th rate radio show.
My anti-BS glasses made the article read: "In a big change from recent times, Man U spent the game against Spurs pinned back in their own end fouling and making frantic clearances."
Main commentator (name ?? ) and Bradley Allen are good on BBC Radio London. Mainly cos they always sound like they are having a mates' night out at the game. Overseas streams : Trevor Francis. Completely unbiased. More or less reads it spot on.
Neville and Dixon are the only British pundits worth their salt, the rest talk utter ****e. Pundit views are geared towards the "establishment" and that's United (LFC to a lesser extent) therefore anything you hear is going to be from there point of view. Personally I don't even bother readin match reports or listening to punditry after we've played Man U or Liverpool for that very reason.
Dixon and Keown are breaking that up to some extent (although Dixon can do one as well, frankly), whilst Shearer is committing crimes against logical thought - yet for some reason they dropped Graeme Le Saux, who was a damn good pundit when he was on the sofa.
Good shout with Le Saux - very level headed punditry. Le Tissier could do more as well. Must be a Jersey-thing!! Lol
I don't think they want level headed punditry they have their vision of a football fan and that fan is thick so they want their commentators to appeal at that level. Strachen, Le Saux, and Le Tissier far too intelligent for their profile.
We had David Pleat for the Utd game- they always put him on our games! He may have an inside knowledge of the club but generally spouts utter drivel and cliches and states the bleedin obvious. Gale also what a complete tool.The better ones are Gary O' Reiily(played for us for a bit-6061 will hopefully tell us when) and Stewart Robson(I know he's a Gooner & spammer) but they are knowledgeable and unbiased.
You watch some streams and the bedroom broadcaster has forgotten to turn the commentary on and you don't notice until the 20th minute. Bliss. They all bore me. Why can't I have the mute option on my set top box? Call the names out for the first 5 minutes then shut it. That's my compromise.
It seems that Colin Murray's been replaced by Mark Chapman on MOTD2. Can't say that he's ever bothered me, to be honest, but his presenting style's probably more suited to his old job on Channel 5.
Personally I find steve clarridge very annoying. He is extremely childish and clearly hasnt developed mentally since his teenage years. Robbie savage will change his argument mid discussion just to appear like he isnt talking complete nonsense, which is pretty often. Alan greene just agrees with whatever the callers say, which makes for a REALLY dull show. Anti spurs bias doesnt annoy me half as much as simple stupidity. Neville, pat nevin, james richardson, tim vickery are all pretty good, imo.
I know this is a minority view, but I like Murray. Most of the other hosts are so dull, he is provocative and interesting. Clear Utd bias, but isn't worried to provoke arguments,
There's not much anchors like Murray and Lineker can do, it's the scripts fault, and other than occasionally pointing out when Hansen's talking bollocks Lineker doesn't do much different to him. Lineker might be good at his job but anchors aren't hard to find and for the budget they use to pay for the anchors and ****ers(Lawro and Hansen) on the show every week they could easily get an ex-ref on to talk through decisions, some pundits with a bit of personality and something interesting to say and who knows, maybe they could even trouble the pundits enough to make them actually watch the full game before talking about it. MOTD is outdated in everyway and is still attempting to tell the audience how they want it presented, rather than looking at the increased popularity of a more indepth statistical and tactical analysis that you can get on various other football programmes and sites. They're even behind the times in the way they still create their own, frequently wrong, stats for matches when the rest of the footballing World uses OPTA and even their "live text" commentary"(which is actually quite good) uses OPTA's Twitter as their main source of interesting stats.
Brian Clough telling the pundits how it is. [video=youtube;oqAZsoF-ghw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=oqAZsoF-ghw[/video]
Colin Murray sacked by MOTD2 for "irritating" the pundits. So the likes of Lawrenson and Shearer, who know nothing about football despite long careers playing it, are retained despite offering nothing to the programme and being good reasons why people turn it off can get somebody else the sack because they don't like them says so, so much about the BBC.