Man Utd sent me to sleep; it’s no Lowland League – the football week in TV
John Nicholson watches a whole lot of football on TV; thankfully there was a whole lot of football on TV this week, particularly on Amazon Prime.
For last week’s praise of Roy Keane and MOTD, come this way…
Here’s his pick of the highlights and lowlights from Christmas week:
Scottish Championship: BBC Scotland
If you miss the Scottish fitba on a Friday night in favour of some Sky hyperventilation, you are missing Proper Football presented by Shetlander Jonathan Sutherland (who seems to have oversized feet) and Leanne Crichton (usually buried under a big coat) and this time, former goalkeeper for 10 clubs, Cammy Bell, a kind of Scottish Rob Green.
It’s quite an old-fashioned title sequence with synthy theme music and comes this week from Hampden Park, to see Queen’s Park play Raith to about 1,000 punters in a 50,000 vast echoing stadium. Usually it comes from an intimate lovely ground with adjacent houses with the lights on; everyone usually looks suitably cold and the bosses tend to look like they manage the bar at their local social club. More Mini Metro than metrosexual.
It’s all pleasingly parochial with adverts around the pitch for the likes of Turban Tandoori in Giffnock and The Barnyard Bar in Coatbridge. The players, when interviewed, are not media trained, often look terrified, and are gauche and unassuming. Leanne has a massive set of bright white teeth and was previously somewhat parodied for having a massive bun of hair, but now wears it down and is always a knowledgeable, enthusiastic and cheerful presence.
Everyone’s Scottishness is unreconstructed, pal. There’s none of the seriousness we usually see in English football. Cheerfulness is undervalued in broadcasting.
James McFadden is usually around and is the co-comm alongside Al Lamont this week, though it’s often Michael Stewart, who does look like he might fight you for the last battered sausage of the night. The league is tremendously competitive, the football usually hugely entertaining, refereeing often questionable and is great unpretentious Friday evening entertainment as long as you appreciate real football not the plastic, autocratic-monied version which is negative about positive football.
Shaved hair above the ears is de rigueur for the vast majority of players, making it look like there’s an outbreak of head lice in a prison. It’s often so quiet that the bad language, if you can understand it, often has to be rather pointlessly apologised for.
Billy Gilmour and Scott McTominay of Napoli feature in a half-time film; the takeaway point about football in Italy is the unsurprising view that it is much better than in England – unless you work for Sky, obviously, and never actually watch Italian football. Then ‘Our League’ is the best in the world, which it will not surprise you to know few in Scotland believe.
Queen’s Park contrive to lose a game they dominated 2-1. If you wouldn’t normally watch it, do yourself a favour and do so, preferably with a nip of the uisge beatha in your blood.
EFLing with Sky Sports
You can feel like a bit of an extremist watching a League One game two days before Xmas. God knows there can’t have been many watching Crawley v Birmingham from a misty, atmospheric, pleasingly packed Broadfield Stadium, but I will watch any football given the opportunity and here the pundits were rocker Gareth Ainsworth and battered pizza connoisseur and legendarily angry Scotsman, Steve Evans.
No grandstanding against a big screen because this is the third tier and it’s hard not to think Sky was admitting this game doesn’t really matter to them. It was a pleasure to see Steve, a large man, whose trousers were worn like a rope tied around a water bed, as blessed relief from the tyranny of the athletic body of the ex-pro. He didn’t go radge sadly but I enjoyed Andy Hinchcliffe’s all-in enthusiasm co-comm for this game. He kept my attention and he really earned his corn. The low-key vibe was a nice release from the febrile default.
Italian stallions
If you watched Monza v Juventus on the 22nd, yes, I was the other viewer on TNT. It was better to watch than any Manchester United game. Actually they do a good job of Serie A coverage to an audience of literally some. Pleasingly, it’s a stripped broadcast that starts and ends with the whistle.
And if you were wondering what had happened to Nigel Spackman, he’s often here, as is sometimes Clive Allen. The lesson is that football trimmed of an hour’s punditry and slo-mo Photoshopped packages either side of the game is no worse and markedly less annoying. Also the idea that the PL is somehow better is obviously unsustainable. TNT’s Italian football is deliciously romantic and it deserves praise for delivering the game efficiently for those of us who know oranges are not the only fruit.
Boxing Day Football Feast 1: Hearts v Hibernian
The 26th used to pull big crowds as people used football as an excuse to avoid grandma’s sprout wind for an afternoon, until watching a repeat of The Great Escape, while eating a hundredweight of After Eight Mints and Newberry Fruits before you went to bed in a diabetic coma. These days it’s a festival of TV football, lots of games to be watched, which is ideal if your legs refuse to work properly like mine.
It starts with Hearts v Hibs, which turns out to be the best game of the day, Premier League be damned. It’s a fierce derby, without the added toxic tang of witless sectarianism. Kris Boyd is at Hearts and he always looks narrow-eyed and suspicious and also too big for his seat. A touch of the elephant in a Mini about it. Eilidh Barbour is a comfortable, intelligent presenter.
Two co-comms unusually accompany regular fitba commentator, Ian ‘Crocks’ Crocker. Stuart Lovell and Greenock man Neil McCann are an Aussie and a Scot working well together and delivering textured, varied work, providing a constant stream of passion and insight. Better than is typical. A tremendous game.
Boxing Day Football Feast 2: Manchester City v Everton
City’s latest failure v Everton was on Prime with the pleasingly relaxed Dan Walker, Stuart Pearce, Phil Jagielka and Rachel Brown-Finnis. I caught it post-game. They talk about Haaland without confronting the fact that their goal average is less with the terrible gurning haircut than without. Doesn’t seem to occur to anyone that City’s reason for failure might be hiding in plain sight.
Pep looks like he’s got PTSD and has been held hostage in an underground Syrian jail. Still, Sean Dyche does sound like that ‘That’s Life’ dog saying “sausages” and he carries himself like every bouncer you’ve ever encountered in the last 40 years. I half expect him to say “sorry, no trainers mate”.
Boxing Day Football Feast 3: Newcastle United v Villa
Then it’s onto the Newcastle game on Prime with Guy Mowbray and Michael Brown doing co-comms for an uneventful broadcast, distinguished by Thomas Hitzelberger bringing some welcome beta male vibes to the punditry and a strangely swaying Shay Given with presenter Marcus Buckland, whose appearance looks constructed out of three other presenters.
Boxing Day Football Feast Tedium 4: Wolves v Manchester United
This featured a rare appearance by a very Mancunian ‘call the cops’ Wes Brown, now 45. Feel old? And a puppyish Matt Murray. Presenter Manish Bhasin is also greying. Time’s winged chariot, I guess. The mill worker-voiced Lucy Ward is Jim Proudfoot’s co-comm. It’s awful, much worse than a Lowland League game, so awful that the mist seemed to be trying to obscure our sight of it. I fell asleep, as you do watching the best league in the world. Of course United lost. They are a special flavour of laughable, with players who are stealing a living and taking the pish.
READ: Ruben Amorim predicted Manchester United ‘storm’ but should have known shower of sh*te was coming
Boxing Day Football Feast 5: Liverpool v Leicester City
By the time Gabby, Emile, Jon Arne Riise and Roberto Martinez turn up on Prime in the fog, the United game has drained me of the will to live, like a footballing succubus. Jon Champion and Andy Townsend are doing commentary, which feels very 1990s. The endless Van Dijk, Trent and Salah hagiography which precedes the game is a sickeningly rich pudding of slaver, grease and deification.
Martinez is a good half-time dissector and Leicester are at least better than Manchester United to watch. VAR sucked out all the atmosphere and joy to get to the same call as the original decision. So not correcting mistakes then. Pfft. But Liverpool won, as Prime guessed they would, which – in a ratings chase – is surely why it was selected to be the last match on in the first place.