Ex Players as Pundits.

Have you tried any of the podcasts. There are no ex-players on them. Just journalists who at least have spent time looking into football from a perspective that more closely mirror our own

 

The ex player pundits give us an insight in to why there are so few English coaches at the top of the game.
They feel a lot more comfortable belittling the referee and mistakes he may have made, as opposed to pointing out any tactical or technical flaws in the match.

 

Another smug one here.

 

Sorry to troll but it is a bit funny to read every day the latest terrible thing that some Sky presenter or tabloid has said about Saints. Can't you all just watch Jeremy Kyle like everyone else?

 

Actually this is too narrow a field. I don't feel that the teams in the other three leagues get enough attention from pundits and find that the football coverage on Channel 5 is actually very interesting because these teams are considered. It is more interesting learning about the issue affecting other clubs especially, as mentioned, the minutiae of the major teams gets debated ad nauseam

 

Have to say that I haven't watched any Ch5 coverage of the lower leagues. Perhaps I should, though I am jaded by all the crap from the PL. I am honestly much more interested in what might be happening to a lower league team than any other PL team, especially a Top 4-6 team, simply because we're not generally informed anything like as well about lower league teams, whereas if a player from the top 4 or 6 team sneezes, we know all about it. The volume of ejected matter; the speed and force from which particular nostril. I think you get the idea. And I really don't give a **** about all that stuff. Honestly, give me a Hartlepool match [for example] on a wind swept night with an iffy pitch. That's real football news.

 

Their coverage of the Championship is not too dissimilar to the style of football in the Premier League with many of the teams / players /managers being familiar. I don't think that the quality in the Championship warrants the neglect in the media and the matches seem a lot more competitive. The two lower leagues are covered by what they call "Goal Rush" which is effectively the selection of the afternoon's goals, saves or major incident. The fascinating thing to me seems to be the lack f attendances and the empty grounds , especially as this doesn't seem to get much coverage in the media. There are as many "stories" in these two leagues to write about as in the Prem and the fortunes of once celebrated managers is something that is quite fascinating. For, example, it was staggering to see how far ex-Saints boss Dave Jones has sunk before getting rapidly sacked by Hartlepool. You can also watch players like Adebayo Akinfenwa who is pretty unique and must scare the living daylights out of opposition defenders.

The lower leagues also get covered a lot in WSC and this magazine throws light on issues that will certainly be missing from the mainstream press. Coverage of the Premier League is pretty saturated in most newspapers yet most of the red tops fail to get to the hub of issues quite as succinctly as this magazine.

 

I am not surprised that the top 6 clubs get talked about ad nauseum as presumably more viewers are interested in them....as Ian points out the gates are very small as you go lower down the leagues. I used to wait patiently for the League Show that used to be after MOTD....luckily as a 'big' club we got a reasonable amount of coverage....though they had to spare time for every goal in all 3 leagues. It's not the time spent on the big clubs, but the idea that what they want is more important than the other teams. Unless a team is facing relegation, it is always assumed that a win is somehow more important for Chelsea, City etc than for Stoke or Saints, for example. And who can forget that getting Virgil is very important for Liverpool, but it is apparently of little import for Saints to keep him.

 

I strongly agree with Fran's last comment which is very typical of someone like mark Lawrenson . It is quite intriguing that journalists pride themselves on having freedom of information and have vigorously contested the right to report sensitive issues as it is "in the public interest" yet when it comes to football, there is plenty to get their teeth stuck in to yet they continue to concentrate on such a narrow spectrum of clubs.

 

Trouble is they are only doing the job they do 'cause they can't get anything else...............

 

And therein lies the problem. Football is full of semi educated individuals and that includes ex-managers, who may know people in the game and rely on their status as formerly involved in the sport but actually have no depth no knowledge. When l listen to them talk its about as intellectual and my mates and l talking over a pint; l learn more about players and clubs reading on here than l do listening to them. Keep up the good work all!

 

I have been listening to the 5 live podcast this morning which featured Jenas and Darren Bent (plus journalist Darren fletcher)

Oh dear .

Between them they seemed to think we sold alderweireld to spurs too cheaply and that Liverpool had actually bid for van dijk. Just simple facts that they did not know

They were also waxing lyrical about siggurdson based (seemingly) only on the fact he was an ex team mate. Only casually mentioning the difficulty in fitting in all the attacking midfielders.

They were also talking as if Everton's net spend was 0 due to selling lukaku. Last I checked he wasn't sold for 120m. And all the new players wages will far exceed what lukaku got.

Who does fletcher support? You'd have thought it was Everton. Sadly the BBC seems to pale compared to the guardian podcast and James Richardsons new one

 

I like to think of the Totally Football podcast as Liverpool and the Guardian as Saints. Top talent and Producer Ben tempted by big money (maybe) but still bringing new names through. They're both good though. Also fun: Double Pivot Podcast, if you like your football nerdy and American.

 

I think I might stop with the Guardian podcast now. I stopped even casually watching Soccer AM when Max Rushden started as a presenter. In my heart I don't think it's personal, but I guess it must be.

Totally football has promised to not be so Top 6 centric, so I'll see how that goes.
Will definitely check out the double pivot

 

I am also going to check out double pivot now

 

Mike Caley and Mike Goodman are the Double Pivot guys, good follows on Twitter if you're into that sort of thing too. Obviously not just PL though. You can just skip the bits where they talk about USMNT .

 

I think my biggest issue will be if they actually refer to them as the USMNT - which I believe is often the case in the states

 

Did anyone see Keown on BT yesterday after the Arsenal Stoke? Utter moron when talking about the disallowed Arsenal goal

 

It's not even easy to say...do they say the letters or pronounce it Usmint?

 

Well you sound like someone who has accepted the status quo and just accept it as 'the way it is'. Well screw that.The fact that media coverage is so clearly skewered towards six clubs is unjust as well. Sure Man U might have... I don't know, say 6 million people interested in them enough to want to watch them on TV, that means 50 million or whatever are not interested enough to watch Man U on TV. Funnily enough, in that land of greed and excess that people like to have digs at, at least when it comes to the NFL they have done things right. The games on national television (Sunday Night, Monday Night, etc) are always different teams, even if arguably the Patriots are the Man U of the NFL, they're not on every freakin' week like Man U are here. The NFL does a good job at recognising and valuing every team in the league while in the ****ty PL there's 6 teams and 14 punch bags for those six teams. Not to mention TV income is distributed equally. **** you, Scudamore, I won't watch what you tell me.