Going to be a bit of a big lineup for Rangers V Celtic today, 4 pundits, 3 commentators, Howard Webb watching the ref and 2 reporters. Maybe a bit too much people that BT have sent today although understandable considering this is their first old firm games in ages!

Dutch Eredivisie - Feyenoord v Ajax:

Sky Sports MIX - Richard Connelly and Matt Jackson

I have just rolled out an update which allows for the addition of alternative commentary options. e.g. commentaries available on the red button

Using Bangor City v Rhyl on S4C from yesterday as an example, you would add the primary Welsh-speaking commentary team first and then use the new section to add the English-speaking alternatives.

The channel only needs to be selected if the different commentary team is specific to one channel. An example of this would be games of the past that were broadcast in 3D which had different commentators for regular coverage and 3D coverage.

Will write some more guidelines about this at some point but this note will do for now!

Premier League - Manchester City v Southampton (Sky Sports 1):

David Jones presenting from Stamford Bridge with Graeme Souness, Thierry Henry and Jamie Carragher. Patrick Davison reporting from the Etihad Stadium.

Commentators - Rob Hawthorne and Niall Quinn

Just to update on this, they are doing a ITV-like setup for this match. Darrel is in a studio with Staurt McCall and John Hartson, Emma Dodds is with Chris Sutton, Terry Butcher & Howard Webb near the gantry in a outside studio and Michael Stewart/Stephen Craigan is in the tunnel doing analyses on a touchscreen.

It works slightly better than the ITV setup but I'm not sure what's the point of Michael and Stephen doing analyses on a touchscreen in a tunnel.

But to confim today's lineup:

French Ligue 1 - Caen v Saint-Etienne:

BT Sport Extra 3 - Armel Tanguy



Italian Serie A - Torino v Lazio:

BT Sport Extra 4 (and later on BT Sport 3 on conclusion of the Tennis) - Simon Brotherton

Commentators too busy watching replays to spot a goal being disallowed. Not the Dream Team at The Emptyhad by any means....

Bit of a hash from Hawthorne and Quinn on that disallowed Stones goal

They were both completely unaware of it being ruled out and were seemingly only told through their headphones.

Imagine if that had been ITV, pretty poor from the commentating team.

Quinn trying to make up for it by saying the crowd did not know the goal has been disallowed.

Or anyone at BT apart from Ian Darke

Crowd? Remember the guy who tried to convince the forum that city's stadium is always full. By the look of it thousands of people have turned up dressed as blue seats for Hallowe'en

The crowd are shocking, really quiet, extremely dull atmosphere.

Like the fans are at a friendly game.

That Hawthorne/Quinn cock up has brought a question to mind.

If a commentator makes a really bad mistake, would the match producer or director have a bit of a word with them about it at half or full time or would it just be ignored?

Is there a sort of post-match debrief that takes place amongst the team covering it after the match is over?

Red Bull Leipzig vs. SV Werder Bremen
World Feed/BT Sport Extra 5: Rob Daly
FS1: Keith Costigan
talkSPORT: Joe Shennan

Really not a fan of these types of negative stereotypes cropping up more and more. It wasn't ITV. It just reinforces a bad perception people had of the channel which seemingly can't be shaken. ITV produced some outstanding coverage during the last Euros.

Same with people always going on, incorrectly, about Clive Tyldesley always mentioning the 99 UCL final (never understood) or Darren Fletcher having a delivery of 100mph (that one's a particularly irritating tag which I dismiss). It's just nonsense and immediately reduces an argument or point to a basic level when this thread is so much more than that.

Sky's coverage today has been appalling, They didn't even discuss the disallowed goal at half time and had so many adverts they had no time to.

I think what he meant was that this thread would've been in meltdown had it have been ITV

Strange there's only been a couple of posts about this particular cock-up

And it was a big cock-up; when viewers have a replay on screen that is when they are most reliant on being kept informed by the commentary team.

Chelsea v Manchester United on MUTV

Jim Rosenthal presents at Old Trafford with Ron Atkinson and Lou Macari

Stewart Gardner reporting from Stamford Bridge, the delayed TV commentary will feature him and Pat Crerand

I know the comment was as if to say "there would've been 3 new threads started and calls for ITV to be stripped of their contract" which has on occasion happened before. But I just feel the negative association of some broadcasters or personnel has gone full circle and a mistake can't happen without some sort of mention of ITV.

It's entirely appropriate that we've had what 5 or 6 comments about a small lapse in concentration which was rectified shortly after. It was a mistake as they were paying attention to what we could see. If anything the director should be to blame for scheduling a replay during live play, another thing we are seeing way too often now.

Carragher has left the studio as attention switches to the 4pm game.

Without some sort of mention of ITV on here, that's the point. The comment was less about ITV, more about the threads here. Or that was my reading of it - hence my BT follow-up (Darren Fletcher gets so much negativity, Ian Darke can apparently do no wrong - yet he too is very prone to mistakes.)

I also think it was very much also about the fact that Sky get so little criticism here. I remember them missing one of the goals of the season before last - Charlie Adam, halfway line - because they were showing a close-up of a Chelsea player lying on the ground (again something the commentator could be informing us of). I was the only one to mention it. If that had been BT (to clarify that is about this thread, not BT - I like their coverage).

As for replays, they are a particular bugbear of mine, along with the ridiculous jump to touchline cameras from the main camera during live play, which is very jarring and makes you lose your bearings.

However, in this case it was a goal - or appeared to be - so it makes sense that replays were shown. As usually happens happened here, the co-commentator spoke during the replay. So what was Hawthorne watching? My point stands, commentators need to be informing the viewer what's happening when the viewer can't see for themselves.

Spanish La Liga - Sevilla v Atletico Madrid:

Sky Sports 5 - Kevin Keatings and Terry Gibson

Oh, ignore this.

To be fair I don't think this thread is alone on that - you only have to see the replies to Lineker on Twitter 99% of the time to see that (I'm not comparing this thread to Twitter - this thread is far better and often produces far more interesting discussion than the feeding frenzy Twitter can become).

Sounds like the situation today is one of those times the 'BT Box' would actually be useful - it's actually a good idea for something like this but too often is used to show Klopp,Guardiola etc. on the touchline for no reason.

Though a simpler solution would be for broadcasters to not show so many replays - it's not confined to football by any means but the sheer unnecessary number of replays means something like this is bound to happen when it really shouldn't.


On any Hawthorne criticism I would say even the best make a mistake. I can think of the likes of Tyler, Darke and Tydesley all making some big clangers in the last year or two. I imagine even thread visitor Peter Brackley has over the years.

Hawthorne is still a good commentator.


To be fair SSN didn't do any better. I tuned in at 2pm and they had the score as 1-1. Imagine my shock half an hour later when the score was 1-0.

Deleted.

The same rights reasons that mean MOTD and MOTD2 can't go on iPlayer for 24 hours. I don't know what they are, but of course up until this season it wasn't on iPlayer at all.


Good documentary, that. It's worth pointing out that most of the top flight clubs were in favour of signing up with Sky, it was the big five (ie, Liverpool, Everton, Man U, Arsenal and Spurs) who were happy with ITV, because they were on all the time. The rest of the top flight were barely on - mostly when they playing one of the big five - and Sky were offering to show umpteen more matches so all the clubs could get on. Indeed the big change with Sky came with the quantity of the games. We certainly wouldn't have had Monday Night Football on ITV, there would have been far fewer games.

As mlt11 has pointed out before, though, the Football League very nearly signed a ten year contract with BSB in 1988, which would have been a huge change. Football itself was still coming out of the doldrums and before Italia 90 it would have disappeared onto a channel virtually nobody had. I know Sky was still a very small operation in 1992 but it had many more subscribers than BSB would have had. Especially because they weren't even on air until 1990.


Indeed, though all he contributed was a few jokes he clearly does in his after dinner speeches and more laughter than your average episode of Goals on Sunday. He was no Lineker, you'd have to say.


I dunno about this, presumably most of the commentators are busy commentating on Sunday, unless they're at Man U and can do both. And the more players they can have on the better, because more people have heard of them.


Well, there was another example of this on Sky a few years back in the European U21 Championships, when Tyler and Smith failed to notice an England goal had been disallowed, and it took a good few minutes until they realised - although in that case the host broadcasters' graphics and the stadium scoreboard also changed. But again, you'd think they'd have noticed they hadn't kicked off.

There was that example on Setanta Ireland a few seasons ago, wasn't there, where both commentator and co-commentator failed to notice a goal being disallowed, and didn't realise for the rest of the match. And I think Final Score the other season incorrectly reported a score because their reporter told them a goal had been scored and didn't notice it was disallowed. Although I don't think any of that tops the moment in the FA Cup a few seasons ago when Ipswich played West Ham, I think, and the Ipswich players spent so long celebrating a disallowed goal, West Ham scored while they were doing it.

In Des Lynam's book, he talks about when he accidentally referred to a match as being on BBC2 instead of ITV2 - when he was on ITV, obviously - and after the show there was a massive post-mortem about it, Des saying "You would have thought I had defamed the Queen, replete with four letter words". But he says that nobody actually pointed it out when he said it, the director didn't say anything in his earpiece, and he said they'd done that he could have corrected himself and made a joke about it, but he remained totally oblivious to the whole thing.

I am committing to this because it's 100% correct...

Burton vs Birmingham - Introduced by Scott Minto with Peter Beagrie and Darren Wassell, commentary by Daniel Mann and Andy Hinchcliffe
Bournemouth vs Spurs - Introduced by Simon Thomas with Jamie Redknapp and Tim Sherwood, commentary by Bill Leslie and Davie Provan
Liverpool vs West Brom - Introduced by Jake Humphrey with Steve McManaman and Michael Owen, commentary by Darren Fletcher, Robbie Savage and Glenn Hoddle
Forest vs Cardiff - Introduced by Kelly Cates with Ian Holloway and David Prutton, commentary by Gary Weaver and Danny Higginbotham
Super Sunday - Introduced by Dave Jones with Jamie Carragher, Thierry Henry and Graeme Souness, Man City vs Southampton commentary by Rob Hawthorne and Niall Quinn, Chelsea vs Man U commentary by Martin Tyler and Gary Neville