ITV football coverage: Urge To Kill Rising

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?

ok lol

I said Townsend, but also Beglin, as he's always moaning and I've no idea who he is. Did he play football?

I see Andy Gray crept nastily in further up - he is more evil than any of the ITV pundits. I actually hate him.

I like Pleat, both for his refreshing pronunciations of foreign players' names and his generally cheerful and generous analysis of the game, and of course his 'Evening Clive, evening everyone' opener.

The winner is - Andy Townsend - for he is utterly useless, as has been pointed out above - that awful thing of describing the replay to you that you can see in front of you on the tv in front of you, only surpassed by the time I saw the generally likable Hasselbaink describe quite a lengthy slo-motion replay of a goal thus

'And he passes it and.... er.... that's the goal!'

Beglin is indeed tiresome, a cut price Gerry Armstrong.

Andy Gray is awesome.

Hmmm. I hate him. I hate his mean spirited 'what they should have done' commentary, I hate his continual carping about officials (if officials made as many bad calls as he did in his commentary they'd quickly find themselves confined to their static in Zeal Monachorum), I hate his smugness borne of everyone else pandering to him the whole time, I hate his laughs intended to show humour but which are actually because his nasty bitter reductive little soul can't bear being thought of as the nasty bitter reductive little soul it is. I hate his smile. I hate his pseudo-authoritative BULLSHIT. I hate his pointless use of computer graphics. I hate the way he appears in the pre-match flummery, the commentary and the post-match over-analysis. I hate the way he gives himself all the excuses as to why his opinions are wrong and shit, and no one else the excuses ever. I REALLY REALLY HATED when he was called upon to talk about the run in last year and upon his face wore an expression of such SHITTINESS compounded of self-regarding wisdom and gratified but self-deprecating humility that it almost made me smash the tv in with my fist and instead made me crash my fist down on the table causing me to bruise my knuckle. I like the story about him in his tartan socks and him saying 'it's only a little scottish willy' but only because it makes me laugh and also hate him even more. I really really fucking hate Andy Gray and his voice and his face and him.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

that night in barcelona

Gama, please by all means hate Andy Gray, but his analysis is at least analysis (and, on the rare occasions I've caught it, quite plausible analysis) and not just a re-run of the goals with an '...and that's a great finish' voiceover. I do agree with you, though, about the tedious ref-baiting, not just on the part of Andy Gray, but among TV pundits in general; who needs endless replays in order to prove that the officials got it wrong? That doesn't shed any light on why my team lost and why our manager got his tactics wrong again.

Not sure I'd agree with taking Gray to task on ref-baiting. I don't have sky any more, so he may have got worse over the years, but he certainly used to be the one pundit who criticised referees sensibly, by things like:
- realising that they have a pov of their own, even using a ref's-view-cam graphic on occasion
- expressing the view that where e.g. an offside is marginal, the ref is entitled to call it either way (a massive conceptual leap in punditland, where the orthodoxy now is that the ref can't do anything unless he's 100% sure)
- saving his greatest wrath for pedantic 'booking for shirt off'-type refereeing

All other pundits/commentators are worse. I hate Jonathan Pearce most - his sanctimonious outrage when, five minutes after some passage of play that passed without comment, a lackey comes up with a replay that suggests that maybe the ball brushed a hand during the build-up

Gray's worst innovation was calling players by their first names. I don't want cosiness, I want pundits who don't care whether the platers like them or not. That's where it sounds like RTE have it nailed

haaaaaaaahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahahaaaa

I was about to bump this :)

Aye, me too. Fucking class. Well done.

the commentary itself is fucking infuriating...they speak way too much but never say anything worthwhile. also after gerrard limped off to hear them carping on in worried tones for 20 mins must infuriate both sets of fans.

lovely dream sequence interview with gosling there.

http://italy.theoffside.com/files/2008/01/intermission.jpg

lol another fuck up.

the sellotape connecting the news to the football match has torn

Christ, they don't know what the fuck they're doing now.

please cut to townsend smoking and drinking a can

it's what rte would do

somewhere, a hamster lies dead inside a cog

they need to take the snowed in workplace approach to this and just shut the place down if it's not resolved in five minutes

And now, embarrassingly, a clock...

jesus, I'm actually hoping this gets a cheeky Lineker zing on Saturday

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLX100000000000000

itv fuckin it up 1987 style

also like that Tyldsley went on about what an amazing seasoned pro finish Gosling's winner was when it deflected off Mascherano's hand onto Skrtel's shin on the way in

I went to itv.com to see if post match interviews were up and got

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useless bastards

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ok what actually happened here? i watched it in the pub and, yeah, it looked like they were going to a break but footage was back on within about 5 seconds and we all to clearly saw the jammy goal. dunno what went on afterwards either, did they lose it again?

Game was ongoing, they cut to ad break (the wee sponsorship ad then couple of adverts) then straight back to the game in time to see lots of Everton players piling onto each other in celebration.

wtf

Internets suggesting that how long they outed for depended which ITV region you were watching on. I was watching ITV London, which was what was on that YouTube clip above, though other sources (including or something up there) suggest they rectified it quicker in other areas?

yeah Ailsa, I was watching on Granada (albeit not in NW England - long story) and they managed to cut back to the football just as the winger was about to cross. Still, it was remarkably inept.

I'm pretty sure this was an accident. They wouldn't have deliberately scheduled an ad break for 2mins before the final whistle.

Apparently there's two centres of broadcasting in the UK, one in Leeds and one in London, hence the two different streams.

I'm pretty sure this was an accident. They wouldn't have deliberately scheduled an ad break for 2mins before the final whistle.

Credit crunch, advertising revenue drying up, Carol Thatcher etc

I was watching on Granada (albeit not in NW England - long story) and they managed to cut back to the football just as the winger was about to cross.

Ah, right - so most Everton fans saw the goal and most Liverpool fans didn't. Sorted.

*high five*

The BBC did a similar thing during the epic Aberdeen vs Celtic match the other day that made it to 12 penalties a piece. Earlier on we'd had to switch from BBC1 to BBC2 for something, then in the middle of the (admittedly very very long) penalty shootout they switched back to BBC1 without warning! Thankfully we were watching at home, and could quickly change the channel, but I bet there was a lot of pubs having to do some quick channel changing to avoid riots.

An ITV spokesman said investigations were under way as to the cause and it was too early to say if the weather was to blame.

ba ha.

CraigG, how much of that Celtic game did you watch without being able to tell the difference between Aberdeen and Dundee Utd :-)

That was totally different as they did warn that they were switching channels for the news (it's not that unusual for over-running matches to jump between channels, they'd done it in the last round when Partick took Rangers to extra time as well). Unscheduled ad breaks in the middle of a game is a whole different kettle of fish.