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Did anyone else see this last night?.....I'd always been reasonably OK with the format of the Beeb's 'Football League Show' - it was a bit dull I know and presenter Manish Bhasin was hardly brimming over with personality, but the pundits (Steve Claridge, Leroy Rosenior) were of respectable pedigree and offered decent analysis plus it got through the highlights in a systematic format (the higher your teams division, the sooner you saw them.) On the downside, Clem's location films were often a bit patronising and then there was the main bugbear, the late starting hour....even following a Championship side, there was a fair chance you'd have dropped off before they appeared.....
So when the news came that Channel 5 had acquired the rights to show the League highlights and that their new show would start at the viewer friendly hour of 9pm (allowing the follow on to 'Match Of The Day' if desired) I was actually quite pleased. It's football.....show highlights...garnish with required amounts of build up, post match interviews and analysis...simple....and Channel 5's live football coverage had always been fairly straightforward, unremarkable perhaps but largely acceptable....what's to go wrong, then?
Following the crap theme tune (no change from the Beeb there...) we were welcomed by much whooping and hollering into a claustrophobic studio overpopulated by assorted footy fans standing around like spare parts in front of a cheap and garish set featuring some oversized 'League Ladders' of the kind given away by 'Shoot' magazine in the 70s and the league trophies themselves. The presenters, Kelly Cates (nee Dalglish) and George Riley seemed reasonably OK in themselves - a rolling 'expert' analyst format is employed, and first up was Adam Virgo......(no, me neither.....)
I soldiered on, buoyed by the news that the game featuring my own team, Sheffield Wednesday, against newly promoted Bristol City would be the 'featured' game. It was first up, the 'feature' lasting all of around 8 mins, including preamble, highlights, post match interviews and a rather unnecessary 'my eye' (whatever that may be) from Michael Vaughn taking up a whole minute. At least we won 2-0. The coverage then wandered into League One to show Sheffield United's 4-0 defeat at Gillingham - taking it division by division wasn't in the plan then. Well I'd got off very light, but it was hard to get a grip on the rest of the action with the laboured party atmosphere, games being shown at random and the guest Martin Allen looking suitably uncomfortable, after about half an hour I could take no more.....and we're in for three years of this?
In all this was reminiscent of the Beeb's recent 'Wimbledon2Day" debacle, undermining the intelligence of the viewer, failing to take the sport seriously enough and eschewing analysis in favour of 'banter' and 'celebrity' bollocks. It seems that C5 had taken Sky's 'Soccer AM' as their basic template - nothing wrong with that show, but that serves a different purpose - I've no objection to coverage of the 'matchday experience' and related twittery/instagramming, but that should be kept well apart from the main coverage of the sport itself - remember, it's precisely because that 'matchday experience' is now so costly that many football fans rely on the highlights package as a lifeline.
Channel 5 need to sort this out - and quickly!
So when the news came that Channel 5 had acquired the rights to show the League highlights and that their new show would start at the viewer friendly hour of 9pm (allowing the follow on to 'Match Of The Day' if desired) I was actually quite pleased. It's football.....show highlights...garnish with required amounts of build up, post match interviews and analysis...simple....and Channel 5's live football coverage had always been fairly straightforward, unremarkable perhaps but largely acceptable....what's to go wrong, then?
Following the crap theme tune (no change from the Beeb there...) we were welcomed by much whooping and hollering into a claustrophobic studio overpopulated by assorted footy fans standing around like spare parts in front of a cheap and garish set featuring some oversized 'League Ladders' of the kind given away by 'Shoot' magazine in the 70s and the league trophies themselves. The presenters, Kelly Cates (nee Dalglish) and George Riley seemed reasonably OK in themselves - a rolling 'expert' analyst format is employed, and first up was Adam Virgo......(no, me neither.....)
I soldiered on, buoyed by the news that the game featuring my own team, Sheffield Wednesday, against newly promoted Bristol City would be the 'featured' game. It was first up, the 'feature' lasting all of around 8 mins, including preamble, highlights, post match interviews and a rather unnecessary 'my eye' (whatever that may be) from Michael Vaughn taking up a whole minute. At least we won 2-0. The coverage then wandered into League One to show Sheffield United's 4-0 defeat at Gillingham - taking it division by division wasn't in the plan then. Well I'd got off very light, but it was hard to get a grip on the rest of the action with the laboured party atmosphere, games being shown at random and the guest Martin Allen looking suitably uncomfortable, after about half an hour I could take no more.....and we're in for three years of this?
In all this was reminiscent of the Beeb's recent 'Wimbledon2Day" debacle, undermining the intelligence of the viewer, failing to take the sport seriously enough and eschewing analysis in favour of 'banter' and 'celebrity' bollocks. It seems that C5 had taken Sky's 'Soccer AM' as their basic template - nothing wrong with that show, but that serves a different purpose - I've no objection to coverage of the 'matchday experience' and related twittery/instagramming, but that should be kept well apart from the main coverage of the sport itself - remember, it's precisely because that 'matchday experience' is now so costly that many football fans rely on the highlights package as a lifeline.
Channel 5 need to sort this out - and quickly!
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