...joker in the pack Steve turns up on Radio 5 Live every Monday night and sometimes on co-commentary duty, whilst serious pundit Steve pitches up every Saturday night on the Football League Show on BBC1. And both are what my mother, in her best Dublin brogue, would have referred to as “blithering idiots”.
Back in the day, those footballers who had some kind of a brain up top as well as in their feet aspired to be managers & coaches. Given that it takes at most three men to coach a first team squad of, say, 25, then clearly only a relatively small percentage of players were likely to be able to make the transition. The rest ran pubs or became alcoholics – often both at the same time, holding court drunkenly in their own boozer, their audience each passing year becoming younger and thus more disbelieving that the wreck in front of them was once a professional athlete. Oh, and some sold insurance.
However in recent years, another potentially lucrative career option has opened up for the recently retired player – punditry. The saturation football coverage we now enjoy / endure on both TV and radio has left producers nationwide scouring old programmes from their youth and thinking, for reasons known only to themselves, that Don Goodman or Scott Minto will make killer ‘experts’.
Sky & the Beeb very much go for the “show us yer medals” approach when picking their pundits for the big games. Except for Redknapp Junior, who is there to flutter his top, top eyelashes. And because his dad is a top, top manager and his cousin is a top, top player, we’re meant to think he may actually reveal something close to the bone garnered from those still active in the game. He doesn’t. We’ll not talk about ITV.
Covering the Football League in detail makes different demands. What can Hansen or Gray tell us about Stockport? So Sky decided to employ a bunch of journeymen ex-pros (hello Peter Beagrie) to act as our guides to football’s nether regions. BBC followed suit, no doubt reckoning that as Steve Claridge had played for most of the 72 clubs concerned, his insight would be the sharpest.
Unfortunately, they failed to take into account that the man is a halfwit. My son often berates me for laughing at my own jokes...which I do. However Claridge, in Radio 5 joker mode, just laughs – manically, hyena-like – at...absolutely nothing. He gets a few incoherent words out, stumbles over where to go next...and thinks a laugh will get him off the hook, cementing his maverick status to boot.
“Well the thing about Pompey (pause)...and Avram Grant (pause)...well you look at their squad (first awkward snigger)...and there’s Big Jamo in goal...” – cue crazed guffaw and some professional broadcaster like Mark Pougatch is left to laugh along with the non-existent joke and try to pick up the pieces.
Football League Show presenter Manish Bhasin has a different conundrum to deal with. Serious Pundit Steve talks very slowly and precisely, like one of those middle class blokes on holiday who thinks it’s rude to shout at foreign waiters and add ‘o’ to the end of everything like the oiks do, only he is actually even more condescending.
MB: So Steve, what did you make of today’s events at Carrow Road?
SC: Nor...wich...are...a big...club. It’s not so long ago...they played Bayern Munich, y’know...great support...Paul Lam-bert...great goal...slee-ping giant...might make (adopts super-earnest expression) THE PLAY OFFS...
MB: Ok...right...er...here’s Lizzie with some more inane emails...oh and if you have any questions for Steve, go to the ‘Ask Claridge’ page on our website at www.bbc.co.uk/football/wholetthisdopelooseatthelicensepayersexpense
I ask but one thing of a pundit – namely, that he gives me, Mr Average Punter, some insights into technicalities of the game that I’d never otherwise have spotted. Some genuine expertise gained from having spent a career in football’s inner sanctum. This is why Hansen and Gray, for all that both can slip into self-parody at times, are top of their game. It’s why I salute David Pleat. I know I’m in a minority on that one, and he does dumb down for ITV, but on radio, he’s supreme. It’s why Jimmy Armfield, lovable old soul as he no doubt is, does my head in; and it’s why Garry Birtles makes me want to put my size tens through the TV.
Armfield and Birtles have mastered the crap pundit’s art of stating the bleedin’ obvious. Claridge? He can’t even manage that....
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