Wow. We're in for a treat... that will be totally worth watching.

I think you're right with this as I've also suggested it and it could be the scariest 3 man commentary team BT have ever done because McManaman and Sutton just love the sounds of their own voices.

I think your EL picks are spot on. Hargreaves will (I think) commentate on the majority of United's EL matches and vice versa for Jenas.

He's done that before I think on some of the Saturday evening games. Now for Jake to do some Dermot dancing to start the show.


You couldn't wish for 2 more contrasting co-commentators in Mcmanaman and Sutton if both do that Celtic/MC game. For any faults Mcmanaman is often excitable but happy to be there whereas Sutton just always seems to moan whenever I hear him.

I'm not surprised Fletcher is on that game at all- it's probably the biggest CL game that week for the average UK viewer so no surprise they have their main commentator on it.

Rae has done pretty well actually out of it - ending up on the Arsenal game.

In fact I'm quite liking the sound of the line-up for the Arsenal game.

If the thread is indeed right and Derek Rae, Lynsey Hipgrave, Owen Hargreaves and Ian Wright are on it then that's a pretty fantastic line-up and certainly beats the 'David Jones and Paul Merson in a shoebox' line-up Sky would've done for that sort of game.

Edit: Just seen the co-commentator - it was going so very well up until that point.


I was at the game but did see back some of the coverage. The snippets I heard of the commentary weren't that bad.

However, while I know I probably make the same point every single week as you say Jake really is awful.
Fletcher gets the brunt of criticism on here but Jake I find by far the worst part of BT's PL offering . Think at the end of PLT he was calling Zola 'a top lad' or something similar and it really did make me cringe. He tries so hard to be 'a pal' of the pundits/be relaxed/have 'banter' that he really overdoes it and at times forgets all the viewers want him to do is present.
Not that I'm suggesting he become an autobot or anything but he should look at how much better Mark Chapman and Dan Walker are at finding that balance between relaxed and presenting well.

Or even Darren Fletcher himself, who is a more than accomplished presenter in this style, as reflected in his work with 5Live and Fletch and Sav. While I don't actually mind Fletcher on comms I think he would be an excellent presenter of the games. And to me, whenever he did present he came across really well, letting the pundits do the majority of the talking and his 'banter' seemed appropriate.

I think BT's coverage always seems to have its merits. Well, that is until the day they roll out Jake with David James and Harry Redknapp with Fletcher alongside Savage and Francis. I think that would cause me to end my ties defending their network !

I;ve noticed Michael Owen's stock seems to have fallen. He suffered overexposure for two and a half seasons and is now appearing much more sparsely. It appears for a second round in a row he's not covering any team in the CL (although probably alongside Scholes for United on Thursday night). It seems that BT will no longer be using him on commentary so he's now probably on most Liverpool matches, some PL United games (and maybe all in the EL) and the odd other match. While he was hardly perfect, I'd have Owen over Martin Keown, Robbie Savage and Trevor Francis any day of the week!

Just wait until BT unveil the Fletch, Hoddle and Francis and Fletch, Macca and Sav commentary pairings.

I'll be spared the MC commentary hopefully - not a fan of that line-up.


I do enjoy your posts Jonny and this one is no exception.

Goodness that sounds a terrible line-up. James, Savage, Sutton, Ince and 'Arry. Keep them confined to there please - all those terrible pundits in one place. You couldn't pay me to watch that lot.

Jenas sticks out like a sore thumb there as being far too good for that show.

And goodness knows why Pougatch seems to have left the prestigeous 5Live Sport on Saturday gig (and also the PLP Monday gig) to host this rubbish. I assume the Score show pays well but I'm sure his old gigs weren't paying badly either and it just seems slightly odd to move down from one of the biggest gigs in Radio to host an awful Soccer Saturday lite programme. I'm sure he has his reasons but just seems odd.

That said he's thankfully still got that ITV presenting gig where I do like the Wright, Dixon and Pougatch team.

And before it's mentioned I do realise that Merse and co. on Soccer Saturday are hardly Albert Einstein either but Soccer Saturday is established and has a formula that works and the ex-players there work well in that atmosphere.
For Score to succeed, BT actually have to do something different and better to attract viewers for where they'd normally go and I can't see line-ups like yesterday doing that.


The Ryder Cup stuff was pretty much every break in fairness.

The original post by me was tongue-in-cheek to be clear mind.

To be fair maybe I'm just used to it now but I don't find BT's promotion that excessive too often. That said I do sometimes watch CNN who if you think BT are bad for promotion take it to a whole new level.


No problem mate - you're allowed your view whether I agree or not lol.

I didn't hear yesterday and let me be clear I do prefer Darke to Fletcher but I don't mind FLetcher as much as some do on here.
Is Darke better than Fletcher? Yes. However, normally I can listen easily enough to both - though sometimes both can be involved in really bad commentaries (often down to who's alongside them).

And to be fair Darke has been doing this whole TV commentary thing a bit longer than Fletcher.

Did like the Hoddle line though in your post. Not sure if anyone would know this but has something like that ever actually happened - in any sport (a co-commentator being so annoyed that they just leave the commentary booth)?

The Jamo fanclub out in force as ever.




Can BT ever win with their co-commentary selections mind? Not sure I've actually heard many where people have gone 'yeah, that sounds good'.
Not that I'm saying we're wrong to criticise necessarily.

I'll have Keown as a co-commentary though if it means Hargreaves is used as a pundit.

Have to say Klopp is a fantastic signing for tomorrow's MNF. He's a very watchable, likable guy and I heard he was brilliant whenever he's done it on German TV (before he became a manager).

WSL - Manchester City v Chelsea (BT Sport 3):

Natalie Quirk presenting from the Academy Stadium with Casey Stoney and Rachel Brown-Finnis.

Commentators - Steve Bower and Lucy Ward

The commentators appearing in-vision just now.

Italian Serie A - Inter Milan v Bologna:

BT Sport Extra 2 - Sheridan Bird



French Ligue 1 - Saint-Etienne v Lille:

BT Sport Extra 3 - Matt Spiro

German Bundesliga - Hoffenheim v Schalke:

BT Sport Extra 4 (also on BT Sport 2 from 3:00pm) - John Anderson

The key thing with that style is to always remember that at the end of the day the viewers are watching for the match first and foremost.
I'd happily have any of Smith, Hipgrave, Fletcher, Richardson etc. over Jake .

I do feel bad for Fletcher that he seems to get so much of the criticism here - he does take his role seriously and seems a likeable guy and certainly if you asked me to name BT's biggest issue it'd be Jake's presenting way ahead of Fletcher's commentating.

Agreed on BT in general actually. They do have some very strong people and can produce strong coverage which is why the '1 step forward, 1 step back' nature of their coverage can grate. They'll make some good decisions and then make ridiculous ones that undo the good work.
On one hand their CL coverage last year was strong - particularly in studio, on the other hand they produce whatever that Boxing Day coverage was last year which got totally panned on here.

And don't joke about that line-up.

I like the fact though that unlike Setanta and ESPN too they actually feel like a 'competitior' for Sky which has forced Sky to up their game - not always successfully but most of the time so

Spanish La Liga - Atletico Madrid v Deportivo La Coruna:

Sky Sports 2 - Rob Palmer and Gerry Armstrong

As I expected it's Redknapp and Henry with David Jones for West Ham V Southampton. Geoff Shreeves reporting.

Not a huge point here, but I like how Sky are actually doing some presenting outside of a studio. It's good to grain in the atmosphere of a football stadium rather than sit in a small studio all the time. I know BT have been doing this for a long time, however they have started to present pre-match coverage more often from the studio. I'm not saying that's a bad thing but sometimes I rather see matches done sometimes more often from pitchside or outside of the studio like Sky is doing today.

Yes! This was the most exciting thing this weekend, Alan Green in vision on Final Score in the post-match sequence. I think that's the first time he's ever done it. That bit on Final Score is always interesting, you often get rare glimpses of the likes of John Roder and Mark Scott in it.

Alan Green seems to moved over to TV quite well, I think, the fact nobody seems to bat an eyelid at his appearances any more seems testament to that. Shame we didn't get a trademark "goodness gracious" yesterday, though.


There are obvious reasons for this, the fact is that BT have fewer matches than Sky so they trail the same things more frequently. It's not that Sky don't do it either, because just now on the Scottish coverage they've promoted the Scotland matches that in two weeks' time, in lieu of any other Scottish football to promote in the meantime. There is some sort of sense early in the season, which that Hull match was, to promote the live games coming up in the opening weeks of the season, if only to justify your subscription.

It's at this point I turn to Midnight In The Garden of Evel Knievel, Giles Smith's book of his TV sport reviews from the nineties, and the passage about Sky's coverage of Liverpool vs Man U in April 1997 - "In the space of one football match, the following events were plugged: Coventry vs Arsenal, Carlisle vs Colchester, England v Georgia, England U21 vs Georgia U21, West Indies vs India at cricket, European PGA golf from Cannes and a night of boxing featuring Naseem Hamed... After twenty eight minutes, just as the game before us was getting interesting, we were alerted to the future delights of the Auto Windscreen final - 'a Wembley occasion', Martin Tyler assured us, hopefully. 'Sure to be a big crowd.' After thirty five minutes, we were asked to make a date in our diary for Hamed vs Hardy. 'We've got a special pay-per-view event to tell you about,' said Tyler, and your heart sank on his behalf. A commentator as good as Tyler deserves to be able to concentrate himself, and us, on the matter at hand, rather than play street-hawker."


I'm pretty sure there was no chance Derek Rae would ever have commentated on Celtic vs Man City, regardless of what season it was. It's the biggest game this week and Rae is third in the pecking order behind Fletcher and Darke.


Kevin Davies is certainly putting in the hours this weekend, at Preston for Sky on Friday, at Wrexham for BT on Saturday and then on Goals on Sunday this morning. The only interesting thing from that diabolical match was that the electronic board for subs and added time was broken, so they had to dig out the old cards instead.

Premier League - West Ham v Southampton (Sky Sports 1):

David Jones presenting from the London Stadium with Jamie Redknapp and Thierry Henry. Geoff Shreeves reporting.

Commentators - Martin Tyler and Davie Provan

French Ligue 1 - Nancy v Nice:

BT Sport ESPN - Paul Walker

Preston vs Wigan - Introduced by Scott Minto with Peter Beagrie and Kevin Davies, commentary by Gary Weaver and Andy Hinchcliffe
Wrexham vs Chester - Introduced by Matt Smith with Kevin Davies and Dean Saunders, commentary by Adam Summerton and Adam Virgo
Man U vs Leicester - Introduced by Simon Thomas with Gary Neville and Graeme Souness, commentary by Rob Hawthorne and Alan Smith
Arsenal vs Chelsea - Introduced by Jake Humphrey with Rio Ferdinand, Ian Wright and Gianfranco Zola, commentary by Darren Fletcher, Steve McManaman and Glenn Hoddle
Villa vs Newcastle - Introduced by Kelly Cates with Ian Holloway and Steve McClaren, commentary by Daniel Mann and Don Goodman
West Ham vs Southampton - Introduced by Dave Jones with Thierry Henry and Jamie Redknapp, commentary by Martin Tyler and Davie Provan

You're early. There's a game tomorrow :P

Wonder whether it's BL or AP on comms.

Appreciate the love in from BFG , just find some of BT's decision making a tad perplexing. However in terms of bizarre punditry (almost at Jamo level), the apparent exchange on beIN where Richard Keys and Tim Sherwood were making the claim that Steve Bruce would have been a better option than Conte at Chelsea was farcical

On another note, fair play to Sky for getting Klopp on board for MNF. Easily (in my opinion) the most interesting, charismatic manager out there and I'll certainly be interested to see how he is. Generally, if a TV network gets a manager as a guest, it doesn't seem to be particularly exciting (ie. David Moyes or Sam Allardyce in the past) though this is an exception and it should make for excellent TV.

Oh Richard, Richard, Richard.

Gives me a chance to post my absolute favourite Richard Keys clip ever. 'King of BeIN Sport' Richard Keys does Cribs..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vh0LskuENg8

Think my example of ludicrous punditry is 'Arry Redknapp at some point last season suggesting Tony Adams for Arsenal manager.

Tyler bores the tits off me, with his rambling style.

German Bundesliga - Cologne v Red Bull Leipzig:

BT Sport 2 - Simon Brotherton

Oh my lord . This is very embarrassing on Keysey and I think the 'you say the King of beIN Sports, let's stop right there, cos Andy's not here' followed by fake laughter, is one of the cringiest lines ever. The worst thing is I don't think it was meant as a parody! Also this might seem odd but the woman reminds me of a female Jake Humphrey . Strangely, I still don't mind Keys and his actions have instigated some hilarious spoof videos such as this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYFDBX54f-M

'Arry's' main tip last season was wes morgan for england!

Spanish La Liga - Villarreal v Osasuna:

Sky Sports 5 - Kevin Keatings and Terry Gibson

Question: Has anyone else other than Bill Leslie, Daniel Mann or Gary Weaver commentated on Football League matches for Sky over the past few years?

How many years ago was it that Ian Crocker made the switch to solely Scottish games?