The appalling punditry thread
You haven't been on here long enough.
We've had similar posters before.
You haven't been on here long enough.
We've had similar posters before.
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The appalling punditry thread
I did, the best bit was when they got kids to phone in, like the twins supporting Spain and the eleven year that sounded more erudite than Lawro.Geoffrey de Ste. Croix wrote: By all accounts, the CBBC alternative commentary via the red button was 1.6 million times better than the Mowbray/Lawrenson droneathon. Did anyone listen to it?
At half time the three commentators told us were there for the people that wanted something less serious. The woman of the trio made a rather nice put-down of Lawro at this point; "......You know, if you don't want to listen to someone that sounds like Eey-ore"Comment
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The appalling punditry thread
Not quite punditry, but certainly appalling. UEFA doctoring live footage.Comment
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The appalling punditry thread
Newbie here but just reading some of the Euro threads (very interesting too).
UEFA doing some less that honest stuff with the footage - not good, not good at all.
Just on the actual TV coverage in the British context did anyone actually think any of it was any good?
Not that I want to get into a spat with anyone but for example (as she has cropped up in the discussion) Gabby Logan could hardly be said to bring any analytical depth to the proceedings.
That 'interview' with Ashley Cole prior to the QF was so sycophantic it would make Jonathan Ross look like Jeremy Paxman at his most ferociously forensic.
Not to say she is particularly worse that anyone else - male or female - but it's a bit like Brian Glanville's old quip about how do they select TV commentators? Give them an IQ test and if they have a score low enough the job is theirs! Ditto for pundits, presenters and roving reporters it seems.
And don't get me started on Jonathan 'Scream' Pearce...Comment
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The appalling punditry thread
Funnily enough, I think Jonathan Pearce is one of the better commentators. Although he has reputation for screaming and shouting, I think this is mostly a stereotype from his Robot Wars days. Generally he's more than clued up about the players on the pitch (i.e. he has something insightful to say, rather than regurgitating statistics fed to him) and avoids spurting out filler noise for the sake of it.
I'm sure I'll get shot down for saying this, but at times he reminds me of Barry Davies - he has a sense of properness about the player's conduct, takes genuine delight from good and exciting play on the pitch, and avoids trying to fit in a memorable quote during the big games; the latter being something the ITV commentators are particularly prone to do, as my username suggests.Comment
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The appalling punditry thread
Really? I'd say the opposite of Pearce. Spends an awful lot of time rambling on and missing what's happening on the pitch. That famous goal Argentina scored against Serbia & Montenegro, with the 6000-pass move leading up to it - the BBC have a problem showing that clip these days, because Pearce was chuntering on about nothing right up to the point where Cambiasso swung his boot. Fair enough in the early stages where it just looked like keep-ball, but by the time this endless passing move had reached the edge of the box, a decent commentator would surely have referred to it in some way, just in case.Comment
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The appalling punditry thread
Barry Davies - now that was the era when the Beeb was classy.Comment
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The appalling punditry thread
Broken linkComment
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The appalling punditry thread
The guy who wrote that has put Jim Beglin as third best pundit and Lineker fourth. I closed the window immediately.Comment
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The appalling punditry thread
I listened to Five Live's consistently excellent 'Monday Night Club' yesterday evening and enjoyed the intelligent contributions of both Pat Nevin and Danny Mills throughout.
I mention this for the sake of balance.Comment
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The appalling punditry thread
I have and was on the road for the 1/2 final-final so I had to seek an alternative to ESPN (broadcaster in the US). I usually watched TRT (Turkey) with the UEFA English feed. These broadcasts were a mixed bag. John Helm is good, but the others seemed to struggle with name pronunciation of lesser known players. I was able to get a copy of the Eurosport Final broadcast but haven't had a chance to watch it yet. I would like to see the final a second time and will watch that version. Their announcers are consistently excellent, especially Dave Farrar and Wayne Boyce (who did this final). I can't say that their summarizers are very good but they aren't any worse than the others. I do like that that the Africa Cup of Nations tends to feature very little in the way of summarizing in that minutes seem to go by between comments by these ex-footballers. Ideally this Euro final will be the same.Comment
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The appalling punditry thread
It's difficult to reconcile the erudite radio Danny Mills with the snarling thuggish half-wit he routinely appeared on pitch.
He's radio's Martin Keown.
Eurosport need to sort their sound quality out.
It's a mishmash of phase shift and apparently running the audio through an old valve amp at the bottom of a swimming pool filled with marbles.
Worst part of the tournament for me was during the Spain v France match when I was watching the game outside a Spanish bar with the locals really enjoying the frenetic Spanish commentary and along came a bunch of Steves and actually asked the bar owner to switch to fucking ITV to hear the English commentary, Clive Cunting Tyldesley and Beglin (?)
We left to find another bar.
For fuck's sake, lay off the egg and chips for one day, you utter twats.Comment
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The appalling punditry thread
When Pearce first made the move over to TV (2008?), I feared for my sanity and, indeed, the future of human civilisation but the transformation was so stark that I thought it was his namesake. He was much less hysterical than his radio persona and, has been said, quite considered.Funnily enough, I think Jonathan Pearce is one of the better commentators. Although he has reputation for screaming and shouting, I think this is mostly a stereotype from his Robot Wars days. Generally he's more than clued up about the players on the pitch (i.e. he has something insightful to say, rather than regurgitating statistics fed to him) and avoids spurting out filler noise for the sake of it.Comment
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The appalling punditry thread
He started with Channel 5, back in the nineties.Bored of Education wrote: When Pearce first made the move over to TV (2008?)
Pat Nevin's apparently come out against The Rangers starting in the bottom level of Scottish League football, wanting them to start at the top, so he's lost all the plus points he may once have had...Comment
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The appalling punditry thread
He justifies it with the claim that any Rangers relegation- even only by one division- will cause many other clubs to lose a significant proportion of their income, and thus risk bankruptcy.Gangster Octopus wrote:
Pat Nevin's apparently come out against The Rangers starting in the bottom level of Scottish League football, wanting them to start at the top, so he's lost all the plus points he may once have had...
He, or someone on his behalf, should really back the argument with some stats?Comment
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The appalling punditry thread
There isn't any doubt that several SPL clubs will certainly face financial difficulties, bloody hell most of them already are. As the one time chief executive of Motherwell, Nevin is in a good position to know this.
It doesn't excuse his view though.Comment
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The appalling punditry thread
It's like saying we shouldn't ban landmines because all the people in landmine factories would lose their jobs.
aka Fallacy of adverse consequencesComment
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The appalling punditry thread
The fact that Pat Nevin has been cited as an intelligent persona is pretty much indicative of the terminally low standards in the British media, particularly in the footballing world.
Hate to break the news guys but owning a few indie albums and having a pair of designer specs does not turn someone into a putative Baruch Spinoza, Ludwig Wittgenstein or a Carl Schmitt.
Nevin speaks and thinks in banal clichés; it just that instead of them being Sun-like clichés they are Guardian-like clichés.
Nevin testified before a Scottish parliamentary committee giving evidence in connection to the offensive chanting bill – try to find it. He was inarticulate, intellectually lightweight and basically incoherent. Why lawmakers of any stature would pro-actively canvass the opinion of such a non-entity is beyond me. Oh wait it's the Scottish parliament. . .it makes sense now.
And to think that Scotland was once the nation of Hume and Smith!Comment
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The appalling punditry thread
So you're not a fan of the utilitarian tradition then?satchmo76 wrote: It's like saying we shouldn't ban landmines because all the people in landmine factories would lose their jobs.
aka Fallacy of adverse consequences
If I recall correctly didn't Motherwell go into two years of administration on Nevin's watch as chief executive?Comment
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The appalling punditry thread
Wilkommen, Herr Baumann. Nevin does occasionally wing it, but I think you might be confusing his intelligence with your own pretensions there?Baumann wrote:
Hate to break the news guys but owning a few indie albums and having a pair of designer specs does not turn someone into a putative Baruch Spinoza, Ludwig Wittgenstein or a Carl SchmittComment
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The appalling punditry thread
One thing that I heard from Mills, during a radio discussion about football finances, was that he never employed an agent during his playing career. He negotiated his contracts himself, and managed to function without someone buying his groceries for him. That made me look at him in a new light. There is more going on in there than his on-field personality would have one expect.Calvert W. McCutcheon wrote: It's difficult to reconcile the erudite radio Danny Mills with the snarling thuggish half-wit he routinely appeared on pitch.Comment
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The appalling punditry thread
I like that.It's like saying we shouldn't ban landmines because all the people in landmine factories would lose their jobs.
I feel Baumann may be someone else.Comment
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The appalling punditry thread
...managed to function without someone buying his groceries for him. That made me look at him in a new light.
Wow a visit to TESCOs was once successfully negotiated by a professional footballer...talk about low expectations. As for the agent point it depends if, overall, one actually gets a better deal or not - if not it would not have been too smart going down the DIY route.
Agents are not unheard of in areas such as literary fiction.
Dear 'Bored of Education' are we not all many people with multifaceted identities? I'm sure you're not 'Bored of Education' on your passport
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The appalling punditry thread
It was meant more as a generic description of how deeply players let agents run their lives rather than a specific. In the discussion in question Mills was talking about many of his collegues being almost completely out-of-touch with the modern world as their agents did everything for them, and that he thought this was stupid. And also counter-productive for the player themselves, as they became dependant on the agent to sort out any issue, however minor. Which was not a level of thought process I was ready for from him.
He may or may not have ended up out of pocket from this stance, but given the 20% fees that agents charge I'm guessing he did OK. It sounds like a good negotiating stratergy for an England international as Mills was; turn up without an agent, ask for 90% of the wage of the clubs top earner and end up with i) more money in your pcoket than him and ii) the club paying out less, not breaking it's wage structure and not having to increase various other players wages, which are sometimes set in relative terms.Comment
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