Football Pundits

[Vultan]

Is it me or are the majority of footy pundits idiots?!

Watching England game last week and Andy Townsend was a complete f***in tool! Seriously, i thought Pleat was the worst and now him. Although i really do struggle to watch ITV sport in general. They really are clueless when it comes to presenting a football show. Adrian Chiles is not funny so why is he constantly trying to be a comedian?!
Another one I see this weekend, watching West Brom v Chelsea on ESPN, Chris Waddle....how inept is this guy?! With such a mundane voice, and his most utter pointless ramblings, you really do have to wonder what sort of screen test they do, when applying to be pundit...

Apologies for rant!

 

[EastStandBlue]

ESPN inherited Waddle from Setanta, and it's probably their saving grace that he didn't bring McManaman with him.

This has been discussed to death though... There are very few pundits who make sense because there's too much emphasis placed on them having a recognisable face or a TV manner. The industry is plagued by a reliance on ex-Professional's who can barely string a sentence together. Dean Windass is a prime example of such buffoonery.

If you want intelligent, incisive debate, the best you can hope for is Sunday Supplement... Although Brian Woolnough now hosts that.

 

[Pubey]

Alan Shearer really gets on my tits, especially when they expect him to discuss defending. He lambasted Alcaraz at the weekend for letting Harewood cut inside. However:

1. Alcaraz had been left 2-on-1, with a player running past him.
2. Alcaraz had a teammate inside him
3. Alcaraz drops off the player, cuts out any potential pass and allows Harewood to cut inside.

It was the midfielders inability to get near to Harewood which invited the shot. What exactly was Alcaraz supposed to do? He spent about a minute analysing this, and analysing it completely wrong.

****

 

[EastStandBlue]

Alan Shearer really gets on my tits, especially when they expect him to discuss defending. He lambasted Alcaraz at the weekend for letting Harewood cut inside. However:

1. Alcaraz had been left 2-on-1, with a player running past him.
2. Alcaraz had a teammate inside him
3. Alcaraz drops off the player, cuts out any potential pass and allows Harewood to cut inside.

It was the midfielders inability to get near to Harewood which invited the shot. What exactly was Alcaraz supposed to do? He spent about a minute analysing this, and analysing it completely wrong.

****

You might not have to put up with Shearer for much longer now that his Bezzie Mate Gary Speed has landed the Sheffield job.

 

[Pubey]

You might not have to put up with Shearer for much longer now that his Bezzie Mate Gary Speed has landed the Sheffield job.

I might have to put up with him 5 mins from my house though..


****!

 

[steveo]

Is it me or are the majority of footy pundits idiots?!

Watching England game last week and Andy Townsend was a complete f***in tool! Seriously, i thought Pleat was the worst and now him. Although i really do struggle to watch ITV sport in general. They really are clueless when it comes to presenting a football show. Adrian Chiles is not funny so why is he constantly trying to be a comedian?!
Another one I see this weekend, watching West Brom v Chelsea on ESPN, Chris Waddle....how inept is this guy?! With such a mundane voice, and his most utter pointless ramblings, you really do have to wonder what sort of screen test they do, when applying to be pundit...

Apologies for rant!

Townsend as a talksport presenter is quite good. Thing is everyone sees a different game so opinions always vary. I dont like the way Andy Gray nearly always slags off referees after he has watched a replay form 6 different angles. Would love to see him try and ref a game.

Another on on Talksport - Ray Houghton. As soon as someone disagrees with him, he falls back on "well youve never played the game at the highest level"

 

[Yorkshire Blue]

Is it me or are the majority of footy pundits idiots?!

Watching England game last week and Andy Townsend was a complete f***in tool! Seriously, i thought Pleat was the worst and now him. Although i really do struggle to watch ITV sport in general. They really are clueless when it comes to presenting a football show. Adrian Chiles is not funny so why is he constantly trying to be a comedian?!
Another one I see this weekend, watching West Brom v Chelsea on ESPN, Chris Waddle....how inept is this guy?! With such a mundane voice, and his most utter pointless ramblings, you really do have to wonder what sort of screen test they do, when applying to be pundit...

Apologies for rant!

:sherlock:

I don't want to be rude, but that's the biggest case of stating the obvious since I last listened to Andy Townsend.

FWIW, I actually think David Pleat is one of the better pundits (hey, it's relative). Although he mangles the English language (let alone foreign pronounciations), having managed to a reasonably high level he actually understands football and knows a bit about it, always an advantage for a so-called expert summariser. The more thoughtful pundits (again, it's relative) are invariably the former managers*: Pleat, Atkinson, Taylor, Southgate.

*Technically Shearer managed, but he was found out rather quickly.

Those who came straight from a playing background rarely add anything of value: cf Wright, Shearer, Townsend, Waddle et al

Adrian Chiles tries to be funny because he's trying to copy Lineker. Lineker probably could be a half decent pundit - but took that a bit too literally and got stuck on the first syllable.

One of the reasons I've so fallen out of love with football (as opposed to SUFC) is that the standard of punditry, literature and analysis (Lineker could probably be a half decent analyst - but took that a bit too literally and....) is ****ing awful. Football commentary is now akin to those late night repeats which are repeated with the signing for the deaf, except this time for the blind. Only that don't even do a good job at that. Match reports that just regurgitate the score and scorers and add a managerial quote, rather than an explanation of why things happened or the compelling narrative of a game. Mainstream football has just become mindless, so instead I look towards cricket, baseball, American football, cycling etc now for my entertainment where I can find compelling story-lines being told, analysis that improves my understanding or makes me think and commentary that tells me what I can't see for myself (assuming Nick Knight isn't at the mic).

 

[Benji91]

Be thankful you dont have to listen to Matt Jackson. Yesterdays game where Agger was clearly concussed after having the ball slammed in his face was a joke. As he walked off clearly uneasy he dleiberated for 5 minutes as to whether it was, in this order..1. Hamstring. 2. Sickness. 3. (and the best) Heat stroke as there wasnt any shade on that side of the pitch 4. Sickness again 5. Dehydration.
Then 10 minutes later we get "perhaps it had something to do with the ball that hit him in the head earlier"..... really?? thanks.

Count yourselves lucky you dont have to listen to Efan Ekoku every weekend as well.

 

[EastStandBlue]

:sherlock:

I don't want to be rude, but that's the biggest case of stating the obvious since I last listened to Andy Townsend.

FWIW, I actually think David Pleat is one of the better pundits (hey, it's relative). Although he mangles the English language (let alone foreign pronounciations), having managed to a reasonably high level he actually understands football and knows a bit about it, always an advantage for a so-called expert summariser. The more thoughtful pundits (again, it's relative) are invariably the former managers*: Pleat, Atkinson, Taylor, Southgate.

*Technically Shearer managed, but he was found out rather quickly.

Those who came straight from a playing background rarely add anything of value: cf Wright, Shearer, Townsend, Waddle et al

Adrian Chiles tries to be funny because he's trying to copy Lineker. Lineker probably could be a half decent pundit - but took that a bit too literally and got stuck on the first syllable.

One of the reasons I've so fallen out of love with football (as opposed to SUFC) is that the standard of punditry, literature and analysis (Lineker could probably be a half decent analyst - but took that a bit too literally and....) is ****ing awful. Football commentary is now akin to those late night repeats which are repeated with the signing for the deaf, except this time for the blind. Only that don't even do a good job at that. Match reports that just regurgitate the score and scorers and add a managerial quote, rather than an explanation of why things happened or the compelling narrative of a game. Mainstream football has just become mindless, so instead I look towards cricket, baseball, American football, cycling etc now for my entertainment where I can find compelling story-lines being told, analysis that improves my understanding or makes me think and commentary that tells me what I can't see for myself (assuming Nick Knight isn't at the mic).

That's largely to do with the advent of the internet and abundance of televised games in my opinion... Match reports are up on websites within minutes of the final whistle so, by the time people read them in print the following morning, they're old news... It's not worth the effort for the casual sports journalist to incise into West Brom's defensive naivity because Alan Shearer has numbed it's meaning by saying "naive defensively" umpteen times without actually proving it.

If you want the best, unfortunately, you have to go independent. Comparing the analysis of Jamie Redknapp to a site like Zonal Marking is like comparing the managerial prowess of Alan Shearer to Alex Ferguson; they're worlds apart.

EDIT: So I've tuned into Monday Night Football and, aside from Andy Gray's podium making me think I'd stumbled into a parallell universe where he's Supreme Leader, they've made me frankly aware of another big bug bear of mine at the moment: research. None of these ****ers does any research. They've successfully disected the United formation after seeing them not far short of 500 times over the last decade or so, yet Newcastle walk out and it's as if a Martian XI from the planet Zog have turned up.

"Yeah. Err. Kevin Nolan's a bit old now, isn't he?"
"Yeah. Err. Andy Carroll... Bit on the big side, isn't he?"
"Yeah. Err. Jonas Guti..rez. Played at the World Cup, didn't he?"

 

[Yorkshire Blue]

That's largely to do with the advent of the internet and abundance of televised games in my opinion... Match reports are up on websites within minutes of the final whistle so, by the time people read them in print the following morning, they're old news...

I suspect the problem is as much that doing it that way you get some rushed job rather than something that some thought and care went into, although I suspect deadlines have always been an issue. Maybe that's one of the reasons why cricket and baseball have such a richer literature as those games have natural pauses that allow some thought and aren't necessarily just a mad rush to meet a deadline.

 

[EastStandBlue]

I suspect the problem is as much that doing it that way you get some rushed job rather than something that some thought and care went into, although I suspect deadlines have always been an issue. Maybe that's one of the reasons why cricket and baseball have such a richer literature as those games have natural pauses that allow some thought and aren't necessarily just a mad rush to meet a deadline.

Web-based media typically command copy reaches them 15 minutes after the whistle, so it leaves very little time to formulate a degree of commentary and, if something happens in the final minutes, you're almost guaranteed some hatchet job where paragraphs are strewn together at the last minute.

 

[OldBlueLady]

What I hate is that they are often so enamoured of a player that they spend the whole match failing to recognise how useless they in fact are but instead praising them to the skies. Classic case of it last night with Man U v Newcastle (ok, I only saw 1st half) but they were going on and on about Wayne Rooney, how good he was, how he's improving with every game and how brilliant he'll be when at full match fitness. Now, am I missing something here or didn't this guy "play" in the World Cup and therefore have a close season of high level preparation? I lost count of the number of times he lost the ball in possession and as for his shooting in what I saw, it was truly abysmal, he's continuing in exactly the same way he played for England and justifying further why I believe he should be dropped.

 

[Tommy2holes]

I hate Martin tyler . Hes voice just grates on me. Give me motty any day

 

[Napster]

I read an interesting piece t'other day that said most pundits want to say something interesting, but the producers don't allow them to, as they dont want the casual watchers to lose interest. So they opt for the status quo, the comfortable rather than the unorthodox.

 

[ibwiajwa]

I really like James Richardson - he's funny and has a great knowledge of the game. However, since Setanta he doesn't seem to have been able to get a TV job. I love his Guardian podcast though - check it out if you have't heard it.

 

[EastStandBlue]

I read an interesting piece t'other day that said most pundits want to say something interesting, but the producers don't allow them to, as they dont want the casual watchers to lose interest. So they opt for the status quo, the comfortable rather than the unorthodox.

Sounds like a peddled excuse if you ask me. Can you honestly say that you'd expect the likes of Dean Windass to come out with an insightful, intriguing analysis of Spain's tika-taka football?

 

[Napster]

Sounds like a peddled excuse if you ask me. Can you honestly say that you'd expect the likes of Dean Windass to come out with an insightful, intriguing analysis of Spain's tika-taka football?

Not Dean Windass, perhaps. But this was from one of the journos on twitter - cant remember who now.

 

[EastStandBlue]

Not Dean Windass, perhaps. But this was from one of the journos on twitter - cant remember who now.

Like YB said earlier, the only people I'd expect to hear something worthwhile from would be those with managerial experience or who've climbed the coaching ladder, where you have to make that kind of contribution to succeed. For what it's worth, before he took the reigns at Boro, Southgate was touted as one of the best up-and-coming managers in the country because of the aptitude and insight shown on the UEFA licenses course.

The tired ex-Professionals who ITV seem eager to throw money at can barely string a sentence together.

 

[Pubey]

I read an interesting piece t'other day that said most pundits want to say something interesting, but the producers don't allow them to, as they dont want the casual watchers to lose interest. So they opt for the status quo, the comfortable rather than the unorthodox.

I guess that doesn't surprise me. It'd be great if you could find that article/

 

[Napster]

I guess that doesn't surprise me. It'd be great if you could find that article/

Im trying...