Why are TNT Sports so reluctant to acknowledge the ‘imbalance’ which favoured Spurs?

Once again Johnny Nic would like it to at least be mentioned how laughably lopsided that Spurs Europa League semi-final was. Ignoring it is just weird.

I followed the weekend’s games on 5 Live, lying in the sun in our garden. It was the Glasgow derby on Sunday. I hesitate to call it the Old Firm game. That is controversial in itself. If you want to know why, look up Sevco.

For all the sectarian nonsense that often surrounds the game, sometimes out of tradition as anything seriously political these days, it is an occasion like no other. No game in Britain can match it for intensity, even though only a few away fans are allowed in. It exists outside of the rest of football as an island of unique antagonism. Self-feeding and self-sustaining. The fact it’s usually a top two clash is, I’ve always felt, less important than the Huns v Tims cultural clash. Which is why some Rangers fans held up a massive banner drawn from that picture of Souey with a shotgun saying ‘take aim at the rebel scum’.

F365 used to make a t-shirt of that photo. Some people put a lot of effort into their sectarianism. They must have been working on that for ages. Rangers, as either club always does, called it “unacceptable” but no-one believed them – quite the opposite if anything. Celtic are champions and Rangers are a long way behind. But that doesn’t matter here. I listened to reports from the very gruff Scottish-voiced Gavin Wallace on 5 Live and it sounded like it was beamed in from a separate planet. Outsiders don’t understand what it all means in 2025.

Ali Bruce-Ball and Pat Nevin did the Chelsea v Liverpool game. Listening to them I thought about how it compared to the TV; it was the difference between crayons and a fountain pen. Pat is full of intelligent thoughts and speculations from the start. He really earns his fee. There’s no cliches or coasting. It’s a craft and he treats it like one, like a professional. Odd then that some people dislike TV comms but never hear the radio and don’t know what they’re missing. If that’s you, give the radio a go, you’ll be amazed at the difference. It’s like your mates are there.

I noticed the Bologna v Juventus game featured an advert pitchside for Cathedral City cheddar cheese. Selling cheese to Italy sounds ambitious.

The Monday Night Club is always an appointment to listen with Mark Chapman for the best football discussion this time with Nevin, journalist Rory Smith and Chris Sutton. There’s a sensible discussion about the culture behind TAA, an intelligent talk with Liam Manning about Bristol City and a discussion about the Championship play-offs.

Where else would you have talk of the London City Lionesses, the first standalone club in the WSL and hear a chat with managing director Sarah Batters?

Further discussion was about Harry Kane’s relationship with Bayern Munich, then they talked to John McGlynn, Falkirk manager about their title-winning season which made him manager of the year. Then they discussed Leeds and Daniel Farke, Paris FC’s success and owners LBMH, then James Horncastle discussed Pisa’s promotion under Pippo Inzaghi after 34 years and the second leg of Inter Milan v Barcelona. A fabulous two hours of wide-ranging varied programming with culture and intelligence. Everything I want or desire in football broadcasting. I can’t be the only one.

Once it’s over we get the crayons out again for the Forest v Palace second half on Sky. As is often the case, talking intelligently about football was more engaging than the actual football.

Prime had the second leg of Inter v Barcelona. After a legendary first leg they give it the full 90-minute build-up. So much so that it almost certainly would be impossible for the game to live up to it this time but remarkably it did. The package about the game in 2010 was superbly crafted with a super-tanned Wesley Sneijder, who you wouldn’t think was 40, and left you without doubt that to see peak Jose Mourinho was to witness a unique genius of sorts. It had the unintended effect of making their pundits seem a bit dull in his shadow and with charisma deficits.

Alan Shearer does co-comms and does seem genuinely excited throughout as Inter take a two-goal lead and then get monstered by Barcelona in the second half but hang on for extra time by somehow equalising in added time then winning it. Remarkable. This would have been a great final, flowing football, determined defending and thrilling attacking. If you beat Bayern and Barcelona, you deserve a final. “The best two sides in Europe,” said Inzaghi, stamping wonderfully on the throat of the Premier League’s – and Mikel Arteta’s – bloated self-regard.

I was away from home for Arsenal’s nearly-man boss, nearly inspiring his side to get to a final, as most predicted. Is this the standard he’s paid so very much to achieve? It must be and to be fair, he always delivers that standard. Remarkably it must be acceptable to keep nearly, but never, winning. I mean, it’s terrible value for money for the club and he must have a brilliant agent to get £15million with no track record to justify it. The big money is usually reserved for repeated winners and even then they earn substantially less. But it doesn’t seem to matter. I had assumed it wasn’t good enough for the money paid for his wages and the £700million squandered in fees but now, I’ve changed my mind, it seems likely it absolutely is. And he’s not even embarrassed either. That is the madness of the Premier League, right there.

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I thankfully missed what I’m sure was a sickeningly biased commentary but I did catch David Bentley on Thursday on TNT looking like a werewolf only with closer together eyes, while Paul Scholes was emitting strong Eyor vibes in Manchester. He’s only happy when he’s sad.

I was really sure that Spurs would lose on penalties. The way they all kept saying they just “had to get the job done” made it sound like the opposition was a particularly troublesome compacted stool. Bodo/Glint didn’t have millions to waste like Spurs, after all. You’re always going to get lopsided match-ups in cup football but the extent of this one was such as to make a mockery of it as a tie at all. You can’t have one side with one €6m player in their squad and another with 26 worth up to €60m or more and expect it to be tight. TNT once again totally ignored the massively skewed resources and approached it like Spurs were playing someone with vaguely similar finances. I mean whatever your position, surely it’s worthy of at least one comment. Even if you’re not critical of the imbalance. It obviously has an influence on the performance and result. It should be a talking point, even if they want to keep the pretence that it’s an even game and not a humongously mis-matched one.

But when Spurs won, it still wasn’t even hinted at. You can’t say it’s not dishonest. At least Spurs haven’t paid Ange £15million to lose a semi-final, eh?