Originally Posted by TLG86:
“I agree - but MattN is correct to suggest that Sky have a bit of a problem. They'll die in a ditch before they give up Man Utd v Arsenal/Chelsea/Liverpool/Man City. Come 16:00 on Sunday Man Utd could be seven points behind third place. The narrative for the game on Sunday will be it's a must win game for Man Utd (and possibly Chelsea for that matter). That's why I chuckled at David Jones calling last night's game a Mourinho Masterclass. If the object of last night was to take points off Liverpool to harm their title chances then he did very well. But another draw on Sunday and they will be slipping out of contention.”
Well, I would still refute the suggestion than Man U are "rubbish" - Chelsea last season were rubbish, Man U are still winning more games than they're losing and even if they do stay where they are in the league, that in itself is a story. We've certainly had periods before when Man U haven't been in contention - the Eric Djemba Djemba Golden Age is an example, and in 2004, Liverpool vs Man U had so little riding on it, it was a Saturday 3pm kick-off. And since then there are more matches on TV so I think it's much easier for Sky to still get to show loads of Man U matches, regardless of where they are in the league.
As for Liverpool vs Man City, it's worth remembering it's in an inconvenient slot and maybe Sky decided the potential ratings there meant they could pass on it without being desperately broken hearted, especially as they have several other games in that period. They've certainly passed on many other big games before, Liverpool 5 Arsenal 1 is an example in 2013/14, which was much later in the season and at a time when Liverpool were favourites for the title.
Originally Posted by casinoman13:
“I wasnt talking about the hype of last night's game, i was talking about the amount of times Tyler last night talked about something else which had nothing to do with the game, just trying to start up conversation with Neville for the sake of saying something.”
I have said this before but Tyler is certainly one of our most talkative commentators. It's perhaps not so noticeable because he's quite quiet, unlike Darren Fletcher for example, but he certainly can talk. I always note the little bits of wordplay he does, inevitably I can't remember any of them but things like "Adam Lallana is back in the team after a bout of flu... and Liverpool flew out of the blocks tonight!". All that kind of stuff.
As for the hype, that has been an issue with Sky since day one, and indeed all football coverage. Quite often the big games don't live up to much - I remember The Guardian at the time Chelsea won the league complaining that they'd done so without a single memorable performance - and who now can remember the results or the quality of any given Grand Slam Sunday and so on throughout the years? But sometimes the big matches do deliver, so you can't just write them all off based on one bad one.
Funnily enough on BBC4 we've got to May 1982 in the Top of the Pops repeats and the show truncated by the Cup Final replay, and John Peel said "Let's hope tonight's match is more interesting than the first one". It wasn't, of course, and that was a time when it was the only matches on TV all season, so live games were hyped to high heaven and it was a genuine problem when games were bad. This weekend wasn't very interesting but next weekend could be brilliant and all will be forgotten.
Originally Posted by Li4m:
“Cricket lends itself a lot more to that kind of thing than cricket does, I think. Particularly in Tests, there's a lot of time for less-focussed chat. Football doesn't really allow for that kind of departure from the game at hand in quite the same way.”
Indeed, which is why cricket have been able to do things like The Analyst during play, because the game's structure means they can, whereas in football they can't add any innovations during the game because there's simply no time.
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