Every week something happens that makes me love football a little bit less. It’s a phrase I’ve found myself typing repeatedly this season although as my club Queens Park Rangers is being turned into a ‘boutique’ by some rich people from Formula 1 who “won’t be told what to do by people who come once a week and pay £20” perhaps that’s not surprising.
This week’s excuse to trot it out came during Sky’s build up to the Spurs v Newcastle game. Now I tend to avoid the build up to matches on Sky because watching Richard Keys build up Bolton v Stoke as if the world is about to come to a halt for 90 minutes so six billion people can watch two poor teams hurl long throws at each other tends to do my head in - I’ve had some super Sundays in my time and let me assure you Bolton Wanderers figured in none of them. Anyway as I knew I would be writing a ‘football on television’ column for Goalfood starting this week I thought I’d sacrifice myself to Keys, Glenn Hoddle and Matt Smith lookalike Rob Lee for ten minutes at least while I did the hoovering. I haven’t been missing much.
During the pre-match hype we were treated to a ten minute personality orgasm with Alan Shearer. When asked what he’d managed to change at Newcastle, bearing in mind he’s been given eight matches outside of a transfer window to keep a team obviously not good enough in the league, he did say one thing of interest - a news story in itself. “We’ve cleared the treatment room by making the injured players come in from 2pm until 4pm instead of earlier in the day,” said Alan. Ahhh the wonders of Sky Plus. Hoover off, rewind on, yes that’s right, there really were players at Newcastle sitting out absolutely crucial games in the history of the club that pays their wages with injuries so minor they could miraculously clear up when faced with the possibility of working until the un-Godly hour of 4pm. Makes you sick doesn’t it.
Anyway then that little Chinese man from Banzai popped up inbetween adverts for Herbal Essences and Sheila’s Wheels (know your audience well don’t you guys?) and offered me 9/2 on a Newcastle win which I promptly took. Who says advertising doesn’t work? Lo and behold as the teams appeared and Andy Gray jiggled the players up and down, so to speak, all the “injured” men were suddenly there and available to play. When did Newcastle last have Martins, Viduka, Smith, Ameobi and Owen all available for selection? And all because they don’t want to work until 4pm. Very good of them to join in with seven games left I thought as my tenner went west with a flick, well two attempts at a flick in fairness, of Darren Bent’s boot. Still, I’d taken a ton off the Chinese geezer backing against both QPR and my Rugby League team Hull FC the previous day so he can keep his toothy grin to himself for now.
I’d had enough over-hyped build up for one day so rather than flick straight to ITV for the Man Utd - Everton game I had my brother climb onto the roof and point the Sky dish in different directions until a suitably adequate picture quality on Setanta Sports presented itself. It was Scottish football, barely a sport but Hibs did manage to thump home a decent goal in defeat and it did pass 20 minutes or so. Then it was off to Wembley.
Now ITV’s coverage has been widely slated this season, and not only because we sat through two hours of turgid Everton v Liverpool fair only to miss the goal because the pillocks were trying to sell us Tic Tacs. It’s crap really isn’t it? Let’s be honest here.
Thankfully Manchester United were involved which relieved Clive Tyldesley no end. On Wednesday night he’d blown the sweepstake in my living room wide open by mentioning United an unprecedented 14 times (we are counting name dropping Wayne Rooney by the way) in a match they were not involved in. He’s got it down to a fine art, often trotting out three or four completely irrelevant sentences to twist in some reference to “Fergie” and his boys. Still 14 references to a team not even involved in the match is really going some.
One thing ITV, and Tyldesley in particular, fail to grasp is that at any given time 80 per cent of the audience is desperately hoping United lose. Come on, I bet you were out of your seat when that Porto equaliser went in the other week weren’t you? I was, but then I am the man barred from The York in Sheffield for starting the German national anthem during a particularly satisfying Champions League defeat in Stuttgart a couple of years back. When United beat Bayern Munich in the Champions League I was on a plane to Greece that took off from Manchester - when the stewardess announced the final score at the end of the game everybody groaned. I’ve never been so glad to be rocking around the sticky end of a thunder storm at 25,000 ft. At least I was with like minded individuals, not down on the ground listening to Tyldesley frantically searching for a box of tissues as the winning goal went in.
A second thing ITV fail to grasp is that we would actually quite like to see the match. Sadly, once again, the semi final on Sunday was broadcast from the third row of the lower tier using the producer’s mobile phone. The picture quality was so poor and pixelated that I mistook Leon Osman for the Everton mascot as the teams lined up for the gratuitous hand shakes (Why? Are they going to kick each other and dive less just because they shook the guy’s hand before the kick off?) and my friend who shall remain nameless said “she’s quite fit” during the second half thinking he was looking at a shot of the crowd when, in fact, it was a blurred close up of Phil Jagielka. Still, not a bad looking lad I suppose. If you’re into that.
In between his needlessly flirty “Wayne Rooney, Edwin van der Sar, Cristiano Ronaldo and others have all been left at home - hello boys” Tyldesley did mutter something about switching to high definition using a red button and certain type of subscription with a certain type of box. I spent most of the two hours looking for that without success. Still, pixelated or otherwise, Berbatov’s penalty miss was worth the investment of time in the rest of the dirge that went before it.
“Do you think the team selection was disrespectful Rio?” asked the Sky Sports News man afterwards. “What do you mean, are those players not good enough?” replied JaJa, completely missing the definition of ‘losing team’.
And then it was off back to Sky for some Spanish nonsense and, more importantly, Mark Bolton’s brown, ankle high cowboy boots. They’re worth a column on their own though so I’ll leave them until next time.
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