I didn't catch all of FNF last night seen from about seven onward. I am also in the 18-30 bracket (and this is starting to sound like some of alcoholic anonymous sketch BTW
) and generally quite liked what I seen. I think they gauged the mood of a Friday night quite well. A lot of people are tired, they just want to put there feet up and relax without having to watch anything to heavy or overbearing. It was also nice to see something a bit fresh and different to the norm. As much as I love MNF, I wouldn't want that style of show on a Friday, it would just feel to repetitive and serious. Likewise, I wouldn't simply want a presenter and probably some of the B list pundits at the ground for bog standard presentation, FNF is after all new and deserves its own distinctive feel, given the amount of discussion its received, I think it's fair to say they achieve this.
In personnel terms, I think Rachel is a good acquisition. She has a good fanbase and I imagine will be popular but she also clearly knows her stuff and where she did ask questions they were relevant and not just bog standard. It would be nice maybe if she did have the opportunity to do as much as Jeff though. For example, I would probably structure it more so that say before an interview post-match Jeff discusses one particular thing with the pundits (say how good the new signings for Man Utd were) and then post-interview Rachel discusses the challenges going for them. I don't think there's anything wrong with the actual use of dual presentation, as long as both of them have something to do, yes they cold have one presenter but its a stylistic thing and I actually quite like and again its something different. Jeff was fine, don't really get the criticism to be fair.
Not sure where I stand on the use of four pundits, my immediate reaction was that it was far to many. That said, it didn't really make the quality of punditry suffer that much as it normally may do. I thought Jamie Redknapp was very well suited to this type of format and have always said he works better as part of a larger panel, he can actually interact better with the other pundits and his contributions are a bit better when he has others to feed off and he's not doing all of the analysis. Ryan Giggs suited the role and brought a lot to the coverage, I very much hope on occasions where they usually consider using Dwight Yorke on a Match, they manage to use him instead. Henry was good, seems to have revived himself recently. Cara also adapted to the format well and I think all 3 of the sky regulars seemed relaxed and comfortable with it. The use of Kammy I thought was great, light-hearted but not overly stupid and helped give the programme some identity. Going forward though, with such a long build up I would be tempted to incorporate some build up to the weekends other games in that time.
Been with one eye watching the Game of the Day now and unlike Liverpool's performance, Jamie has actually been quite good in his new role. He's made his points well, his keen observations we see in his punditry have transferred into this more instant role and he's built a good rapport up with Tyler. It'd be nice to here him on some of the live games here and maybe have one of the more regular co-comms in the studio sometime.
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