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Cameron Carter bemoans shallow and immature football programmes
Some day, all programmes will be made this way. 20 Football Transfers That Shocked The World (ITV4, October 18) was a list programme that raised several questions. Was Manchester City’s acquisition of Steve Daley the worst business of the 1970s? How did Brazil’s World Cup-winning captain Socrates come to play for Garforth Town? Has Fabio Capello nothing better to do than add his comments on a list programme? Surely if he were at a loose end between qualifiers, the FA could give him an experimental side project, such as trying to kill white mice simply by scowling at them from a technical area.
Summer is a time for dreaming of coming success for your club, before grim reality kicks in. Enjoy it while you can, says Jon Spurling
Before the start of the campaign, each team is technically dead level. Even the most battle-weary of supporters may cling to the belief that the new owner/chairman will usher in “a new age of prosperity”, that the “dynamic” and “forward-thinking” new boss will cajole and inspire the troops and that the new striker will rip through opposition defences at will. Reality can sink in within minutes, or the belief may seep out of the club like a slowly deflating balloon over a period of weeks. Unless you happen to follow one of the elite group who actually land trophies regularly, supporting a football team is just one long false dawn.
Cameron Carter traces the social history of Britain through 25 years of friendly faces presenting football programmes on TV
In 1986 presenters and pundits sat stiffly, in wife-selected jackets, behind desks, because the desk is the key western symbol of wisdom. In 2011 we have lounging gigglers like Alan Hansen and Mark Lawrenson who do not even wear neckties, or the man-child Jamie Redknapp who is allowed to wear expensive fashion-clothes and constantly interrupt his elders in a career-long attempt to prove his right to be heard. The desk has gone.
Ever wanted to be a football pundit? Glen Wilson explains how easy it was to be mistaken for a virtual Andy Townsend
As Andy Gray took his final “boo” last month and emptied his desk of his telestrators and On The Buses DVDs, another much less prominent Andy also saw his media presence terminated. As Gray was exiting Sky Sports, Twitter was suspending the account of @AndyDTownsend, the satirical feed which had inadvertently found itself involved in the sexism scandals, having been mistaken by the Independent journalist Andy Herbert for the actual Andy Townsend.