Football on TV: Revealing your sh*t list

This week’s Footy on the Telly is the first in a special two-part State of the Pundits special. This week Johnny asks who is the worst pundit and gets a very clear response.

Okay, this is how it worked. I put out an appeal on Twitter for nominations for the worst pundit and for one reason why. Clearly it wasn’t a scientific poll, nor could it ever be when something is so subjective, but it quickly became obvious who was top/bottom of the pile.

This was inspired by the 5live Monday Night Club feature we ran on Mediawatch this week which documented an extraordinary conversation about who should be the Swansea City manager between Chris Sutton, Robbie Savage, Danny Mills and Adrian Bevington with Mark Chapman in the presenter’s chair. That edition of the Monday Night Club (always a must-listen show) seemed to crystalise something.

You had Adrian and Mark as representatives of the real world, talking like regular intelligent people, and the others who appeared to live in that strange ex-player Land of the Blind where the one-eyed man is King. I found it very entertaining, as I always do. Others were driven insane by it.

I do think we’re fortunate in having a lot of brilliant, elite presenters. From Mark Chapman to Kelly Cates, Carolyn Barker, Lynsey Hipgrave, James Richardson, Gary Lineker, Mark Pougatch, Matt Smith, Danny Kelly, Jeff Stelling and more. These are all people whose charm, wit and wisdom can make the invited ex-pro guests look decidedly charmless and clunky. But even so, Monday was really something else.

Before we get to the results, I think we need to ask ourselves a couple of questions:

What does ‘worst’ actually mean?
Worst is a word bandied around a lot and to most people it obviously means being not very good at the job. But when you think about it, what is the job of a football pundit and how do we judge the quality of a performer? A pundit can be said to be many things and it isn’t really well-defined. There are no quality control definitions available. No standard of intelligence or articulation you have to meet. In lieu of any absolutes, pretty much anyone can be said to be good or bad.

When we say worst do we more typically mean we ‘dislike’ them? I suspect this is the case. But if we do, then surely it is perfectly possible to dislike someone’s work but for them to be actually good at that work, or at least deliver it to the required standard set by the employer.

Producers seem to value ex-players more than anyone else, even though anyone can observe and understand football without having had to look at the genitals of their work mates most days of most weeks. A lot of ex-footballers don’t seem to agree with this, possibly as an act of cultural and even economic protectionism, and they constantly seek to assert a punditry hegemony which sees the ex-pro at the top of the tree. “How many games have you played?” is a regular riff.

Another problem in assessing pundit quality is that there’s a strong tendency in any football discussion, wherever it takes place, to assign wisdom to the person that says something you agree with, and stupidity to those with whom you disagree.  This muddies the waters when trying to assess how good someone is at the job.

Worse still, and I think this is abhorrent, all too often an opinion of a pundit is conflated with their character. So because you think Pundit X talks rubbish, it follows that they’re also some flavour of loathsome person. This is just childish and should really have no part in adult life. I’m certain that we could all find something in common with, and enjoy the company of, any football pundit, at least briefly. After all, we love the game and we’re all pink underneath. No-one should be letting football opinions undermine their basic humanity.

What is the point of pundits?
I think this is where we run into a bit of trouble. Many viewers and listeners have a go at pundits for being stupid, for stating the obvious, for being boring or just being plain factually wrong and offering no insight. This was a common complaint in my research. It was felt that too many seem to think that having been in a dressing-room gives their sometimes peculiarly narrow and warped view of the world some sort of extra validity, when it rarely does.

Clearly some pundits don’t even know all the laws of the game. Others don’t seem know much about football outside of England and worse, are vaguely disparaging about it. Others haven’t heard of European internationals until they come to the Premier League. In other words, we can sometimes get the worst of parochial, chippy, Little England visited upon us via some ex-pros.

At other times it’s like being talked at by someone who has had a serious head injury, so unable are they to string a coherently structured sentence together. Simple things are explained as though they are complex, ideas repeated at increasing volume as though this will make them more understood or valid.

But it’s entirely possible this is why they’re employed in the first place. Not everyone wants things to be in-depth, analytical and expressed in words of more than two syllables. In fact, they just wouldn’t tune in to hear that. What a lot want is a ‘character’ with passion, defaulting to easily understood tropes and characterisations. One viewer or listener’s cliche-ridden idiocy is another’s accessible entertainment.

The job is not as simple as just being good or bad because a lot of football media is not predicated on the idea that the discussion will be especially well-informed, even if you or I think it should be. It isn’t meant to be a university lecture, full of well-researched and well-justified viewpoints, though such shows do exist. Rather, it’s meant as mainstream entertainment through offered opinion. And I think being annoyed at what a pundit says is actually part of that entertainment. I’m sure producers realise that some are just ‘characters’ and are employed for that reason alone.

When you have a room full of well-educated, reasonable people, it can make things far less interesting listening and viewing for the majority audience. Now, I like clever, well-informed people to educate and entertain me with football blether, but I’m not the whole audience, am I? In fact it seems highly likely that I’m in a small minority. And even I don’t want to eat from an extensive smorgasbord of high quality charcuterie every day. Sometimes you want a simple boiled egg, which is why Paul Merson exists on my telly.

There are many hues to the rainbow of football media, having boring people that drone on about nothing much, who talk almost exclusively in cliches and who have a very limited vocabulary, is just one of those.

The good thing about football in 2016 is that if you don’t like what is in front of you, there are a multitude of options to find another flavour of football crisp in the newsagent of existence.

Who is the worst?
Well, I’d wager you knew the answer to this as soon as you saw the headline, didn’t you? The winner was obvious from the start. 30 names were put forward in total. The top five run down:

5. Jamie Redknapp

4. Martin Keown

3. Glenn Hoddle

2. Michael Owen

And the runaway winner is, you knew this from the start, didn’t you?

Robbie Savage.

He got over four times more nominations than Owen and 35% of the total.

This must be regarded as something of an achievement. The sheer breadth and depth of loathing of his work was little short of incredible, and at times I felt it was overly harsh. These few comments sum up the rest.

“Savage is an absolute buffoon. Loudmouth, lacking knowledge.”

“Gobby, ignorant, impulsive, unable or unwilling to use his experience to provide insight.”

“Irritating, stupid and arrogant. And always wrong. Also dresses in the dark.”

“Made shouty, idiotic, illogical ignorance into a latter-day art-form.”

It’s not the purpose of this column to be horrible to anyone and it’s worth saying there are plenty of people who like his work for its effervescent blokeish quality. And for what it’s worth, I am certain that Robbie is a good bloke. Absolutely certain. The amateur psychologist in me feels that he’s covering up for deep insecurities with outward bluster; the sensitive is being protected by the shouty. And he has a boy-next-door sort of charm.

The radio industry gave him a Sony Award in 2011. And 606 has been nominated for a Best Sports Show ARIA this year – though that award should go to 5live’s stunning Hillsborough – The Truth, presented by Kelly Cates.

I know this will seem weird to the point of stupid, but the fact that so many loathe his work will be justification in itself for renewing his contract. In modern media, distinctive people who provoke reaction are highly valued.

He may be widely considered the worst pundit, but perhaps perversely that means he’s actually doing a great job for his employers. If you don’t like that, it’s not his fault, it’s just the nature of the industry he works in. For them, repeating things over and over while shouting a bit, and having daft hair is A Thing. It has value, and listener disdain, ironically, only adds to that value.

And, scarily, that means maybe, just maybe, at least by one definition, the worst is really the best.

Next week, I’ll be asking you who you think is the best pundit and why… You can contribute @johnnythenic

John Nicholson