I personally don't think any of Sky Sports' lead commentators will move over to BT Sport due to the shifting of Champions League rights alone. If more football rights move from Sky Sports to BT Sport then things might be different, but as things stand the majority of freelance commentators who work on Sky Sports' Champions League coverage will be losing out about ten matches per season tops. I'd be surprised if that is enough to force anyone to give up their remaining commitments with Sky Sports.

I think we can take it as read that the commentators who are heard live on Sky Sports most weekends - Martin Tyler, Alan Parry and Rob Hawthorne on Premier League games, Bill Leslie, Dan Mann and Gary Weaver on Football League matches, Ian Crocker on Scottish football and Rob Palmer and Kevin Keatings on La Liga - have a viable enough portfolio of club games not to miss their share of Champions League fixtures that greatly and so have reason to remain at Sky Sports.

According to this post from pakokelso93 in the Football Commentators thread, only three other commentators in addition to those named above were heard on Sky Sports' Champions League coverage last season - Tony Jones, Jim Proudfoot and Gary Taphouse. Now Jones does loads of different games for Sky Sports; from Football First on Saturdays, occasional La Liga commentaries, live age-group football like the Victory Shield and Under-21 Premier League, club friendlies and presumably he'll be used on their World Cup and European Championship qualifiers, so he's not short of work. Proudfoot and Taphouse seem to be used more sparingly, but both commentated for talkSPORT during the World Cup and I certainly could see the former (who only returned to the Sky Sports fold last season) and perhaps the latter supplementing their weekend Sky/freelance commitments by commentating on Champions League games for talkSPORT rather than for BT Sport this year and/or in future seasons.

Besides, do BT Sport really need to attract any new lead commentators? I think co-commentary might be an area that they will need to look at, but I think they have more than enough main voices at their disposal as it is. In Ian Darke, Darren Fletcher, Derek Rae and Steve Bower they have four lead commentators who do the majority of their live domestic football, plus some experienced commentators familiar to terrestrial TV viewers including Peter Drury, Jonathan Pearce, Simon Brotherton, John Roder, Tim Caple and Dave Farrar (if we include Channel 5!) who work on their European football coverage on a regular basis.

I've named ten lead commentators there, which should be a large enough amount for the biggest Champions League and Europa League games involving British and major European clubs. For the more low profile fixtures from a UK perspective, BT Sport use a number of strong up-and-coming freelancers on their coverage of European club football - people like Dan Mason and Adam Summerton - who I think are more than capable of handling those kind of fixtures during the first half of the season.

James Richardson confirming on football weekly that Andry Brassell will be the European Football Shows portuguese league expert this weekend

Good. No need for Horncastle this week unless they do a preview.

Great news, enjoyed Brassell's punditry when he was on some of the European games last season - EFS just got even better.


I assume they'll at least talk about Serie A, even if it's covering transfers as they did last weekend. With Balotelli seemingly moving to us, that should provide plenty of discussion about Milan and Serie A in general.

He is one of the guests on Fletch and Sav tomorrow morning.

It's easy to be wise after the event (seeing as I haven't expressed this view on Digital Spy before now), but I had thought it was a distinct possibility that Andy Brassell would be involved in BT Sport's studio coverage of the Primeira Liga.

I believe Brassell spends a lot of time in Portugal, he often attends the biggest games in the Primeira Liga, he covers Portuguese clubs in the Champions League for UEFA.com and in the past I have heard him broadcasting his end of the World Football Phone-In on BBC Radio 5 Live's Up All Night from Lisbon (I believe his family was with him, so I'm not sure if he lives over there) when he was a regular on that programme.

So with that in mind, he's very well qualified for this particular brief and I think we'll see him as a studio guest for any head-to-heads between O Tres Grandes and other big matches from Portugal that he doesn't attend in person.

Why don't bt sport advertise single games all week so all this week they should have been advertising on other channels the game aston villa v Newcastle United then on the 25th they should be advertising all week burnley v man utd

Why have they moved the logo and score graphic to top and made it so long?

Assume you are referring to the Bundesliga match. The score graphic is part of the World Feed, not a BT Sport graphic.

You need to email sky Deutschland http://www.sky.de/web/cms/de/index.jsp

Interestingly on Sportshub Paul Dempsey said "Tomorrow it's Jake Humphrey, Steve McManaman, Michael Owen, and Gary McAllister for Villa v Newcastle from Midday" - possibility that Owen will be a pundit instead of a co-commentator? Could be reading too much into it as McAllister was also named and he does co-commentary on their Scottish games, but I think he's been a pundit the odd couple of times as well?

We can all live in hope but i sense we'll all be back to battering him on Twitter and here tomorrow afternoon

Probably true I'll take all the hope I can get right now though, maybe one day they'll listen to all the criticism.

Solid second Fletch and Sav show.
Liking headphone bingo

Enjoyed Fletch & Sav, enjoyed it more than Soccer Am, as Fletch & Sav, was all football based, and not silly comedy sketches.

Haven't watched Soccer Am in years, but will regularly watch Fletch & Sav

Better presentation on the ground today I thought. Gary McAlister seems alright as well despite usually doing SPL/SPFL. Less use of the BT box I think, seems to be just with replays now although their haven't been many chances anyway!

It was wishful thinking and no more.... He's boring me to sleep, make it stop......

Terrible game, one of the worst PL games on BTS to date. However I think the fact both teams have strong fan bases will pay off in decent viewing figures for BT.

They will be lucky to get around 500k.

Peak of 650k, average of 450k (My guess)

Thu certainly would be! I'll go for a 440k average which would be alright considering its a contest between 2 teams generally battling in mid table

Thu certainly would be! I'll go for a 440k average which would be alright considering its a contest between 2 teams generally battling in mid table of seasons gone by.

Owen Hargreaves on SportsHub. Guess he isn't completely gone then! Probably to be used for Dortmund v Leverkusen and other Bundesliga matches.

He was also used last night for the under 21's game between Liverpool and Man Utd.

Not sure if this was confirmed anywhere before but Formula E highlights will be on BT (live coverage on ITV4 I think).