ITV football coverage: Urge To Kill Rising

Channel 5's has Nevin, Ian Holm, the Martin O'Neill presenter clone, so it's already won by a street

the Martin O'Neill presenter clone

Radio 1's Colln Mrry?

Steve Rider is the most perniciously patronising, condescending, lug-headed, Daily Mail-esque, loathsome presenter in the history of sport and my vote is swinging towards him, but this will still require more consideration

oshit yeah that Fighting Talk guy a female friend of mine is obsessed with, him

he's really quite good isn't he

I've warmed to him a bit lately, having basically loathed him for most of his time at Radio 1. He does a decent job on Fighting Talk, certainly; trouble is, he can get rather badly out of his depth when he's dealing with the non-regular members of the panel - their Euro 2008 episode when he had Gabriele Marcotti at the other end of a phone line in (I think) Switzerland was kind of painful. He also commentates on poker for Five, which is serious marks off albeit that I've basically found televised poker fairly unwatchable since they started fucking with the basic Late Night Poker template to the extent that you now know what everyone's hand is all the time, which just takes all the damn fun out of the thing. That and they're all basically sweaty Norwegians.

But yeah, Drury's cobblers, this should not be ignored.

Drury is really, really bad, aye. All the ones I picked are really bad, hence why Brackley was omitted. Doyle I can't really envisage tbf but I'm sure he's shit, plus I think he might be that eejit who did the BBC's 2004 Olympic coverage

words cannot express how annoying i find Drury and his portentous guff.

Doyle makes a much better fist of presenting The Championship than Townsend (this is not to say anything at all)

I voted Robbie Earle for his unbelievably pathetic blandness, but it was a tough choice.

This really is missing an 'all of the above' option.

There are plenty of reasons to vote for Townsend: his capacity - like Shearer on BBC - to state the bleedin' obvious and do nothing other than talk us step-by-step through what we've just all seen (you never see Townsend telling us what *will* happen), as well as his patronising attitude to non-'big four' members, and Earle can be anodyne in the extreme.

I like Pleat - not only for his Spurs connections, but because he's the one pundit who has a genuinely good knowledge of players and clubs outside of the narrow 'received wisdom' parameters (Barcelona are stylish, Italian clubs are hard to break down, eastern European clubs are technically sound etc) even if he can't pronounce their names properly.

I also like Beglin as he isn't afraid to criticise English players when necessary - something the MOTD pundits are desperately unable to do.

For me, the urge to kill is with Drury. He takes all the worst elements of every commentator ever and makes it his own - his portentous delivery (Davies), his pre-prepared and painful bon mots (Motson), his 'shock' at the way 'small' (ie: from 5th place down, or non-Spanish/Italian/English clubs in Europe) clubs refuse to lie down and be beaten by 'big' clubs (Clive T). And his contrived yelp whenever a half-chance gets scuffed vaguely close to the goal. I hate him.

yeah, although Pleat is one of the most annoying broadcasters imaginable, he does give off this Graham Taylor-like impression that there is an actual deep knowledge of the game being partially obscured by his obvious senility

dismissed Beglin on the same pointless 20-20 hindsight analysis grounds as Townsend

have a tiny bit of time for Tyldsley based on him being asked in an interview what he thought of people thinking he was complete shit, and responding with good humour and not being a prick about it

yes, d-Pop, anodyone is the word I was looking for to describe Earle. And it's precisely that inability to offer any valuable analysis or criticism that winds me up about UK coverage of football.

Yep Daniel.

What TV football so badly needs is some genuine argument. I've never actually seen RTE's covearge of football but based on the huge amount of second-hand evidence, the kind of sometimes pertinent, sometimes ill-founded, but never irrelevant comments by Dunphy, Giles and co is something British TV desperately needs.

In contrast, what we have is merely lip service. MOTD's idea of discussing issues is Shearer and AN Other (Dixon, Lawro, Bright etc) essentially slagging off either refs or foreign players. They never criticise British players, nor those they a) have played with or b) may one day manage.

The nadir of this was when Shearer was asked about Rooney's stamp on that Aaalborg player and whether he'd be banned for it - Shearer replied "Well, it didn't look good... but I hope he gets away with it." As of course Shearer himself did. No attempt to look at the wider issue and talk about how five years into his career he's still a liability to his team etc.

My favourite Townsend moment was back in the days when Arsenal were annoyingly unbeatable and were playing, I dunno, Southampton or someone.

Des: "So Andy, 4-0 down at half-time, did Southampton get their tactics wrong?"
Andy: "No Des" (proceeds to bang on about how you have to go at teams like Arsenal etc etc)

ITV FA Cup coverage the most strangely boring and affectless thing I've seen on TV since I made the mistake of trying to watch one of those Lord of the Rings films

Dixon's alright xp - one of the few pundits who, rather than thinking his job ends when he's found a cliche, actually goes on to try to explain it. He did a feature on Walcott's poor decision-making last season - pointing out what the poor decision was, what the option was he should have chosen, and what he might have done to create the maximum options for himself - that was one of the best pieces of punditry I've seen for years

Dixon's best on MOTD2 though, he seems a bit intimidated when he's got a big man on the couch beside, waiting to point out that they all had more hair back in the day

Even I now accept that Dixon is pretty good.

Re: Dixon - I didn't mean to accuse him of the same crimes as Shearer and co, merely to say that he sits alongside AS when he does - in actual fact he's, as has been said just now, by far the sofa pundit who has the most interesting things to say.

was Big Ron better than all of these apart from the racism?

Don't know who d-pop is, but OTM

I was in the pub the other day after the live Sunday game had finished, and they showed Andy Gray's post match programme. Now he really puts the anal into analysis, and too many on-screen arrows comes across a bit 'the day today', but I was impressed by the things he chose to focus on and it actually appeared that he was attempting to explain to the viewer why (in his opinion) the outcome of the match was as it was. Compare that with, for example, Robbie Earle's immortal 'they got an early goal, just what they needed' on Saturday night!

Fuck Andy Gray

ok. You go first.

OK, I'll rephrase it, Fuck An Andy Gray

^^^helpfully including the terrible, awful, lumpen, crappy, root-of-many-problems Charlton striker

he was banging them in for me on FIFA. Admittedly he had me whipping the pinpoint crosses onto his head

I like Andy Gray, he so desperately wants you to know more about football. Alan Hansen just wants you to know that Alan Hansen knows about football

Annoyman, he can head the ball in from close range and occasionally do similar with his feet, but stick him up against a half-decent defence and he'll a) waste possession like a lottery winner and b) not engineer himself any chances, but depend on people to land it on a plate for him

Also, his purchase was a horrible, terrible direction for our inward transfers, and I'd argue it's contributed strongly to our decline

yeah I mean he has his limits, that's why I signed for Valencia at the end of the season

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

If there's ITV coverage tomorrow evening, that shall decide my vote once and for all.

who is the studio host for the FA cup highlights? that guy's awful

Steve Rider, the greased-up condescending paedo-avuncular platitudinous cliche-mill

what you guys need is some Ray Hudson

No wait, jergins, Steve Rider's the live host

The studio guy is the aforementioned overgrown work-experience kid Matt Smith, to whom cadence, charisma and rhetoric might as well be glasses where one side flips the view upside down

My vote is between those two, to be honest.

I've never seen ITV coverage but it can't possibly be worse than some of the clowns that cover MLS/internationals/Champions League in the US. Andy Gray shows up now and again and is much better in comparison. The main problem with US announcers is they NEVER STOP TALKING in a vain attempt to cover up for the fact they don't know a very much about the game. It's actually sad that ESPN fired former USA int'l Eric Wynalda, because he was a loudmouth who routinely brought the lols -- and that was what got him fired.

Is American coverage the kind of "And he's kicked into the goalbag, that's 1-nothing to the Manchester Reds!" we always assume it is over here?

Ray Hudson, on the other hand, knows his shit *and* brings the laughs. For example:

“Matador. Look at him, so languid, look at him walking. He’s like a big, beautiful zombie, Riquelme, like a big, beautiful zombie. He just strolls around languid like, like smoke off a cigarette, you know. And then he jump out and just draw your blood.”

xp Sort of. They definitely say 1-nothing, and they definitely aren't shy of saying shit like "the old onion sack".

his 'shock' at the way 'small' (ie: from 5th place down, or non-Spanish/Italian/English clubs in Europe) clubs refuse to lie down and be beaten by 'big' clubs (Clive T).

This is one of THE most infuriating commentary habits. Even the actual pitch Tyldo or Drury's voice goes to in a situation where even a vague underdog is putting it up to a G14 one is intensely grating. And the incessant "NOBODY TOLD ROTOR VOLGOGRAD TO READ THE SCRIPT TONIGHT" etc. Do they actually think when you watch Liverpool scrambling past some team with an awful performance you're sitting at home in shock and awe at what's happening. It's practically what you expect!

What TV football so badly needs is some genuine argument. I've never actually seen RTE's covearge of football but based on the huge amount of second-hand evidence, the kind of sometimes pertinent, sometimes ill-founded, but never irrelevant comments by Dunphy, Giles and co is something British TV desperately needs.

Maybe but people idealise the coverage on RTE. There are occasions when Dunphy or Giles just make negative points because it's their selling point, like an exact inverse of Sky. EG after Liverpool beat Besiktas 8-0 last year they both slated them, and a long tedious "but they won 8-0" argument began.

Similarly Dunphy will randomly spew "Ronald/Torres/Pele, he's a nothing player, FOUND OUT this evening, right here, live on RTE". Or he has a real penchant for just hyping the fuck out of fashionable prospects like Aguerro or someone, "this guy is the real deal, the bees knees" etc when you know Dunphy has never seen him play.

so basically: challops, the football show

Townsend, just because he was a nasty fouling cunt as a player.

^^^this guy needs to post more to the Premiership thread

Me?

Yeah, with the zingmaster crushing kittenforce that you bring. Bad attitude towards certain players always helps.

I think that everyone idealises the sports coverage outside of their own nation, but I do think that the Irish Challop Roadshow, the Italian "IT'S OFFICIAL: MILAN IN CRISIS" after they "only" take 10 points from four matches, or the American "Here's 7,000 stars that obscure everything else on the screen" styles are all preferable to the UK coverage.

Anything is preferable to the anaemic gushing of the obvious tbh

I was about to say "I don't mind MotD" but then I remembered that I ALWAYS fall asleep during it. But I generally am full of wine when it's on, and last Saturday night I'd had sex before it even started so fuck knows how I only missed the Everton footage.

Managed to watch Casualty, though.

I was about to say "I don't mind MotD" but then I remembered that I ALWAYS fall asleep during it. But I generally am full of wine when it's on, and last Saturday night I'd had sex before it even started so fuck knows how I only missed the Everton footage.

When did Lawro start posting on ILX?

IT IS, ITS WOODY HARRELSON

Woody Harrelson cracked onto a friend of mine in a bar on Thursday night and gave her two free tickets to this game. She didn't take him up on either offfer.

classic Woody

okay woody is going to score the winner isn't he

bah

COME ON WOODY

WOODY TO WIN IT

LOL

lolol

"WOODY FROM CHEERS"

I only watched the shootout but that was classic shit.

it really was

any England shootout this summer will come nowhere near that level of drama

Pro-celeb football is like watching Mahler's 8th played by a deaf clown orchestra.

You suddenly realise quite how good even really shit professional footballers actually are.

Peter Drury is the worst. He needs to die, rather urgently.

Absolutely fucking shit from start to finish. A real-life Alan Partridge.

Clive Tyldesley is much, much, much, much more acceptable as a commentator and a human being, than Drury, and I hope this is becoming apparent. NB I do not like Clive Tyldesley

but also Beglin, as he's always moaning

just watching highlights, tyldo w/

SPURS SHOWING SOME GOOD OLD JOE JORDAN DETERMINATION

http://i.imgur.com/oqsCuRh.png

The results of this poll always seemed quaint in the years since, strange that people had such a strong collective delusion that Clive was anything other than a professional and broadly listenable broadcaster

This latest development does call his personal judgement into question though, hmm

Mark Bowen the other night though, fucking hell. Fucking hell.

Mark Bowen sounded like he'd been ambushed after spending all afternoon in a pub and miked up with barely any knowledge of it. Tyldesley however does this as a job and seems to get every ITV big gig now. He's become more hateful than Drury and should have been sacked for at least two particular comments this summer.

"Justice for the England eleven"