BBC Football coverage, list problems here

lineker deserves a better panel than shearer or lawrenson, and i think it's widely accepted that hansen would quite clearly be fit to up his game were he challenged to actually debate or analyze anything whatsoever. he's settled into the easy contempt of the bright kid in the remedial class for so long now.

john giles would have him for breakfast.

Hansen used to be really good and much more angry/critical. I actually think if they gave Lawro a bit of a kick up the hole he's at least got a brain, you can tell he's capable of analysing a game to some level. Shearer is just a tragedy though, the man is just a huge wanker.

Would love to see Shearer with Giles and Dunphy....god that'd be amazing.

they should try and give o'neill a permanent role for a while...

Shearer is just a tragedy though, the man is just a huge wanker.

for some reason this is my favourite sentence of prose I've read today

In an earlier time I think Ronan might have used the word "brutal"

I agree about Lineker, he's very good at what he does. No idea how much is left on the cutting room floor of course.

On Lineker's 'what's wrong with English football' thing when they showed footage of them watching Klose's goal, I was a bit shocked that Shearer was the one ranting and raving while everyone else just looked glum and deathly quiet. I guess I think of him as having so little personality that seeing him caring about something was a surprise.

just hates foreigners imo

and no lawrenson is a brainless gobshite, i don't think there's anything he's got in reserve or anything. his other media work just backs that up

Lineker is very, very good btw - you just don't notice so much because he's not particularly likeable. Lets the guests speak, knows his stuff, generally steers things in the right direction and only occasionally lets himself down by getting involved with the crap. It's not his fault the guests are usually terrible - he shows appropriate respect to the good ones.

― Ismael Klata, Wednesday, 3 November 2010 18:39 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lineker deserves a better panel than shearer or lawrenson, and i think it's widely accepted that hansen would quite clearly be fit to up his game were he challenged to actually debate or analyze anything whatsoever. he's settled into the easy contempt of the bright kid in the remedial class for so long now.

both of these posts otm.

another problem to list - saying teams have scored on the live updates when they haven't. jeez is it that hard to only type goal updates and score changes WHEN SOMEONE ACTUALLY SCORES?

the live updates are terrible, if you compare the bbc one to the guardian one you see loads of incidents are missed, not to mention the fact that they sometimes leave huge gaps before updating it...

they are pretty much illiterate too. i mean i know it's live, but the guardian manages to remain coherent. and they're the guardian.

mind you that bloke doing bolton liverpool on saturday, that was all over the place, errors everywhere. they have a sub working with them as well at bbc so it's two people fucking up...i think they have it completely arseways tbh, they want newspaper experience for the people who do that job. all they need is people who are used to watching matches and feverishly typing on facebook/forums...

hot damn

haha, did your sky interview already happen? any news?xp

haha it's true tho, why on earth would you seek old media people to do such a colloquial and fun job. prob explains why most of them are like if that old beepy thing on grandscreen could form sentences.

interview is friday...i'm fucked with a chest infection but it might be breaking a bit hopefully, i haven't been able to think about it much cos of that but now that it's easing feeling quite confident. actually heard today got an interview with the guardian as well (just to ensure i've slagged off every potential employer here) in a few weeks, but it's not a sport related role.

well good luck!

there is a thread for slagging the guardian off more generally on ILE if that would be useful?

yeah i'm there plenty, i'm scared they'll ask if i use comment is free, i might delete my account beforehand so they don't see me making endless juvenile remarks about articles...

actually thinking about the updates thing...it's probably as slow it as it is because the first guy writes it, the second guy checks it, he then sends a copy to the bbc lawyers who forward it to text rights, then it is filtered through the bip system and must be signed off manually by tvc security.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/scotland/9156977.stm

the headline for this on the main page "managerial greats, are they a dying breed."

real clever there.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_9160000/newsid_9162600/9162687.stm

lawro out of his comfort zone. not actually as funny as it could have been (since everyone funny has been fired) but still funny seeing lawro in this mode...

how'd it go ronan?

Yo sam thanks for asking, i posted a tiny bit of this on ile, it went largely well but was really weird.

I expected a full on interrogation type deal like you'd get in BBC but it was really informal and nice. Made me worry they'd already given the job away except they spent ages talking about what it's like to work there etc. Loads of it was them selling/reassuring me about the job.

Then I had to do a subbing test in the middle with a sports news script and I cut it down a lot and removed all the kerrazy mistakes. There was one about cricket tho where I knew it was a mistake but didn't know the exact right year.

I mean overall it went great in that I was well able to answer everything they asked. I guess personally I'd rather if they'd been harsher as I'd have had more chance to show my skills. I guess maybe they are happier to take your cv at face value than the beeb.

They did show me around the office too at the end. I guess the relaxed feel either means they've already decided I can do the job or as I said, already given it away!

There's two jobs going, one permanent and one freelance. Permanent would be pretty amazing and would avoid what happened to me at BBC ever happening again.

I've noticed there's a kind of MOTD hierarchy of importance - Chelsea, Man U and Arsenal all get lengthy, above-the-fold treatment; the stage is set with a narrative introduction beforehand and highlights are followed by video playback and analysis. Then a fourth club gets a half-hearted version of this. Then you get an absolutely peremptory, moronic intro to the next match ("X have won two in a row..... while Y are unbeaten at home this year!" FFS); the remaining matches are shown with no intro, no analysis, only goals or shots on goal.

Is it just because I is American, or does it strike anyone else as strange that the pan-UK BBC dedicates the lion's share of each MOTD to the same three or four teams every single show? Would it be heresy to suggest trimming the top four condensed games by a minute or so each, so as to offer better highlights from ALL the games and a bit more analysis of them? Sure, Wigan's not a big-market team but it's a show about the Premier League - they need to be in there properly surely!

dude you've forgotten basic capitalism 101

it's the BBC! they don't have the same pressures! there are LEAGUE games (in the following five-hour League show) that get more attention than many Premier League games

It's funny, but I never used to notice the hierarchy until a couple of years back when somebody made a big thing of their team always being on last. Now any suspense the show had is totally ruined for me - if Chelsea-Fulham is on before Man Utd-Everton it's obvious Chelsea must've had a shock defeat. At least if Blackburn-Wolves is up first it gives due notice that there must've been a death, so you can look away if squeamish.

it's at least 7 and a half hours long

also lol klata

the consequence of MOTD's top-heaviness is that when any of the Big Clubs play any of the other clubs (which is all the time) there's no narrative there. Lineker and others need to tell the story of the smaller clubs, build a narrative beyond "beset by injuries of late" or "best start to the season since 2001". in any given game there are at least 24 stories to be told.

the football league show is even worse btw - they tend to give 20 minutes to a big championship game, 15 minutes to a big league one game, 20 minutes to claridge, manish + lizzie doing their vapid thing, and about 30 seconds to every other game

here's an idea: every game gets 3 good minutes, there is no presenter

in fact, slate ITV all you like but this ^^^ was kinda how they did the football league in the late 90s/early 00s

My favorite thing about the League show is Manish's tight black trousers and his incredibly awkward "just standing around" pose

Also the inexplicable WALKS he takes down the motel corridors that line the upper section of whatever airplane hangar they're in. "Oh hello..." I half expect him to be zipping up his tight black trousers at the beginning of the shot. "Excuse me! Just popped in for a quickie"

I still haven't forgiven him for his presentation of the 2007 Cricket World Cup. Yeah he's improved as a broadcaster since then but he's still a mudskipper clambering out of the marsh on the sports correspondent evolutionary chain.

When he, Lizzie and Steve converge at the end it is like they are waiting forthe cameras to stop rolling so that they can produce a young fowl from the folds of Steve's undergarments and sacrifice it to the director general

That's crazy!

That you made it to the end.

league two is always reliable for batshit 9-goal thrillers

Had the misfortune to listen to Saturday's 606 podcast during my run this morning. Simon Jordan, what a fucking wind-up merchant scab knob end.

Had to skip to something else after 15 minutes. He was worse than Savage.

Martin Samuel tackling the same issue this morning:

It would appear this show exists to remind us of the genius of Danny Baker, because 18 minutes of his programme which ran for a year until October 1992 and sparkled with wit, irreverence and, on occasions, righteous anger, was worth 18 years of the sorry whinge fest that has followed in its name

Heh. I thought someone refused to cross a picket line but I guess he was on because Savage had an evening game.

the consequence of MOTD's top-heaviness is that when any of the Big Clubs play any of the other clubs (which is all the time) there's no narrative there. Lineker and others need to tell the story of the smaller clubs, build a narrative beyond "beset by injuries of late" or "best start to the season since 2001". in any given game there are at least 24 stories to be told.

I actually think MOTD2 has been pretty good at doing this for a while, going round one club per week, talking to the fans in the buildup to the game and so forth. It works pretty well with yer Blackpools and West Broms and the like. The problems come when you try and say something exciting about yr perennial midtable cloggers, I can't honestly think of many interesting ways to cover Blackburn or Wigan at this stage.

maybe focus on the promising players at those clubs? who with luck won't have to be playing for them much longer

Maybe I should actually watch MOTD2 some time!

Good to hear it Ronan and gl on getting it. Always hope to see ilf break into the system.

I personally don't see a problem with their being a hierarchy of making the most interesting games go first on motd. Tracer you will find it turn itself on its head come Feb when the relegation battle often makes as good a show as Chelsea storming to victory. Team X is currently at the stage of boring as shit 0 - 0 draws every week and their fans don't even turn up to pretend to care, wanting to put them ahead of actual entertainment or a story is crazy.

Of course it doesn't help that there are received notions on certain teams. Wigan spring to mind. The reality is they actually have many exciting, discussion worthy matches and if the past 5 years are anything to go by, could be working towards getting the exciting players the top teams teams want. This can and should be worked on. But until they fire the shitty panel and hire people who understand narrative as opposed to football cliches that drive you mad I don't see a chance of them sorting this.

far, far better show

On the other hand, I got good laughs out of the tactic backfiring on the League Cup show the night of the Liverpool-Northampton debacle - which they obviously had to lead with, but having already decided the show's narrative* hadn't bothered to send a commentator along to Anfield.

* Chelsea-Newcastle

Wigan spring to mind. The reality is they actually have many exciting, discussion worthy matches and if the past 5 years are anything to go by, could be working towards getting the exciting players the top teams teams want. This can and should be worked on.

In the past, yeah, right now I'm not seeing much quality there, with the possible exception of Rodallega. West Brom seem to have taken up the mantle of New Wigan.

re: the online side of things the BBC's club pages are abysmal:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/f/fulham/default.stm

i.e. under the banner of "Latest video, audio and stories" is an embedded video of Mark Hughes talking about a reffing decision. it's been there for three weeks. there have been two matches since then! it's obvious that no one gives a shit about these pages. it's no one's job to look at them.

ok i just watched the As It Stands table change to reflect Bolton's late goal - not sure how many seconds between the goal and that change. at least ten seconds after the table change the actual scoreline above it changes and then you get a minute or more before the text update.

virgil van dijk is great tho

I don't have words for the degree of my contempt for the cunt Lawrenson

Hard to tell what he despises more - football or being alive

'Brighton beat Leicester in seven-goal thriller'

A seven-goal thriller is 4-3 you tossers, this is canon

Idk there is a certain intrigue to watching a team desperately chasing a fifth so as not to have won 4-2, which as I will elucidate in the coming paragraphs is the most embarrassing scoreline to wi

fair fucks

It was mostly a battering though for real

One less problem, one less member of the Liverpool FC mafia and one less jaded miserable git sucking all the joy out of whatever game he's commenting on.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2022/09/24/mark-lawrenson-axed-bbc-65-year-old-white-male/

Mark Lawrenson was sacked by the BBC because he was a 65 year old white man... who travelled the world to commentate on the greatest fixtures in sport but did it in the style of a performance art piece about a miserable depressive hermit utterly consumed by a hated of football.

— Europe's Leading Soccer Futurologist (@TreborRhurbarb) September 25, 2022

Some aspects of BBC soccer coverage have worsened over time. I'm not convinced that Lawro going is part of that, though.

Greatest Lawro moment anyone? For me it's a game early in the 2018 world cup, where a French player was down injured, and our man witheringly diagnosed a 'dislocated shoelace'