Originally Posted by LOSG:
“ESPN have the rights from the 6th pick onwards. So i'm sure if they can it will go on Classic or America.”
This is surely what will (or at least should) happen. ESPN UK moving clashing live football onto ESPN Classic or ESPN America is something that should have started happening a long time ago.
Failing that, should it come down to a (ROI) rights issue or ESPN's unwillingness to do this, perhaps on this occasion the sixth pick could default over to ITV who may put a further game on ITV3? I remember them using ITV3 for a Wales Rugby World Cup game four years ago when they were showing a UEFA Cup game on ITV4.
Originally Posted by RobinCarmody:
“An unfortunate situation which seems to have been caused by Five's* insistence on showing Spurs. I mean, I know *why* they chose to show them, but that match is extremely unlikely to be anything other than an embarrassingly easy home win, wherever the opposition come from.
*I still call them this out of solidarity with the previous owners”
To be fair to Five (I preferred their previous ownership too) here, I think it owes more to their insistence on keeping a consistent 7.30-10.10pm timeslot, perhaps in part due to it making a handy lead-in to Big Brother.
I wouldn't write off Shamrock Rovers completely - I was expecting an embarrassingly easy home win for Partizan Belgrade when they played them last month, so you never know. And regardless of the fact they are an Irish club, that a side of Shamrock's stature have made it as far as they have in the Europa League makes the game a great story.
When you consider that in the 8.05pm timeslot their only other UK option was Stoke City v Besiktas - which IMO is not that much of an appealing game, despite there being quite a few well known players (Guti, Rustu Recber, Ricardo Quaresma, Hugo Almeida and Bebe) in the Black Eagles' ranks, due to how tarnished Turkish football has become this year - I think Five have made the right choice.