ITV football coverage: Urge To Kill Rising

So difficult.

The FA Cup's on ITV now is it? No wonder I haven't been able to find it all weekend. As for your question, all of them are too bland to inspire hatred. Add in MOTD pundits, then you'd have a poll

Tyldo for all time.

It's a tough decision, but Tyldesley

Really fancy voting Smith or Rider

I had to stop watching before my team were even shown. Curbishley really was like they'd gone "Ha! BBC think they've found the most boring and inspidid Alan in the world to talk about football; we are going to make Shearer seem amazing."

Voted Smith at random in the end.

Bring back Matt Lorenzo (crusing in the Benzo) imo

voted Townsend. But I'm fairly conflicted. Lot of strong candidates.

Townsend for me. I've hated him ever since he began saying we should get rid of Sven, apparently for no particular reason other than Sven not being English (pretty rich coming from Andy Townsend...)

Pleat, easy. The Seth Pecksniff of football punditry.

Tyldsley, has to be.

Is it me or has he got this weird sort of overly careful attitude when commenting on non Man U games? It's like he knows people know he's a Man U fan so he has to kind of be overly insipid if Liverpool or Arsenal are playing. But he still comes off like he's kind of chiding.

He also fancies himself as very showbiz and is a real foghorn. He has a high opinion of his own wordplay and is anything but low key.

Clive "1966" Tyldsley

Jim Beglin. He's a twat. But really, ITV should never get to cover any football ever, everyone they ever employ to talk about it is shite.

the girls i make watch soccer with me, they all wanna fuck Earle. so he gets my vote.

Pleat for causing my friend to make progressively more boring kerbcrawling zings at the TV every fucken time whenever we watch football together

It's gotta be hard being David Pleat, and having your entire existence boiled down do a) kerb-crawling b) effeminate dancing c) being a fucking idiot.

I gotta that at a stretch you could have some kind of moderately entertaining conversation with most of these guys, but having to spend any prolonged amount of time with Steve Rider would properly fucking ruin your day

gotta think

Andy "he's got cramp in both groins, Clive" Townsend.

It's like he knows people know he's a Man U fan so he has to kind of be overly insipid if Liverpool or Arsenal are playing. But he still comes off like he's kind of chiding.

He was very generous and praiseworthy of Liverpool on That Night In Istanbul.

And the thing is that Bob Wilson is far preferable to most of these apart from Robbie Earle (he's the kind of man you'd want in the trenches, assuming your survival in said trenches involved heading in corners from around 12 yards out). Townsend surely worst though.

Anyone who also works for Talksport is an automatic choice. So that's Townsend.
Anyone voting for Smith, Earle or Beglin is a mentalist.

Surprised that Townsend has never appeared on I'm A Celebrity, tbh.

Beglin's voice has this monotone to it. He's not the worst tho, just a bit of a bore.

Townsend is indeed an idiot. INNIT BOLO

Matt Smith has the most awkward, irritating, downright crap presenting-style in the history of all things ever and but for the strength of competition would be a shoe-in for me. He just seems like the work-experience kid kept on for 20 years and given a backwards autocue to solve.

Rider is actually evil, is what we must consider.

Channel 5 TV coverage v's ITV.

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

heskey would have blocked it

Remember that West Ham goal where Tevez blocked the ball on the line in an offside position and they gave a goal? That may actually be the worst decision ever.

not while mendes is still breathing (just)

Remember that West Ham goal where Tevez blocked the ball on the line in an offside position and they gave a goal? That may actually be the worst decision ever.

And there was a handball. That was to beat Blackburn, in their pact-with-devil escape which they deserve terminal financial ruin for

I figure Mendes is like a pair of aces in bad decision terms, but the West Ham one is like some Royal Flush of comprehensive wrongness

ok on consideration it trumps mendes, yeah

Wasn't there a goal given this season where the ball visibly didn't even come close to going over the line?

There was the Reading-Watford one in 2008 that went wide.

It went wide.

Hahahahaha omg amazing. Is it on Youtube?

Wasn't there a goal given this season where the ball visibly didn't even come close to going over the line?

there was one of these too, i think it was last season though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0YiuSbBdaQ

also lolwarnock where the ball came off the back off the net/stanchion and the goal didn't stand- some kid's debut goal or something?

if Palace had gone down I'd have posted that one about 40 times by now - against B City iirc

There was a Southampton one in the 90s that hit the advertising hoarding through the net and bounced out again.

Is 'Neil Webb' Neil Webb or Steve Hodge?

I'm going to stick my neck out and say that I reckon 'Neil Webb' is Neil Webb.

xp that's right temurii ketsbaia lost a week's wages on the outcome and a terrible vendetta was born

can't believe Matt DC isn't already thoroughly acquainted with the Jon Eustace Phantom OG - it's part of footballing lore. Stuart Attwell was the referee. The young one.

That's classic - how the hell did he give that. There was one in the 70's where Stevie Kember of Palace (later of Chelsea) hit the outside of the stanchion and it was given until Kember told the ref that he'd missed.

xp - Neil Webb desrves to be in there. Very very slow.

Talking of Palace - John Salako.

john salako is a fucking legend

This is a legend:

Peter Bonnetti

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM7Smaue7Q4&feature=related

aw he's so little

This is fun:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4b7flwMTwM&feature=fvw

Some classic Barthez screw-ups, but Taibo (or whatever he was called) is the best - it's the first one.

Back to the matter in hand: Dave Beasant. A career based on one fecking penalty save in the cup final.

Tyldsley and Gray commentating on ITV's coverage of pro-celebrity matches is a masterclass in how not to be self-aware in any way whatsoever and kind of wonderful in a bizarro way. It's like a live action episode of Billy The Fish.

haha, it is, isn't it? I particularly liked the bit where they basically suggested that Cheryl Cole was available for shagging any fit celeb/footballer.

i only wanted to watch this for woody, but i haven't seen him once

Injured in training by Buzz Lightyear

YES

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"