There are few problems with Sportscene more mundane than the current footballer panelist who never seems willing to speak his mind. Andy Harrow writes.
Is there anything worse than the Sunday evening dread? The mushrooming realisation that your weekend is almost at an end and another long working week is upon you?
I can think of one thing: the Sportscene punditry panel.
For an hour, Sportscene shows us the Scottish Premiership (and Rangers’) goals. Sometimes we’ll get a nice VT and, in general, the production of the show is pretty good. In Jonathan Sutherland, there’s a presenter who seems as enthusiastic as anyone could possibly be about showing goals to Kilmarnock-Dundee on a Sunday night, and the commentary itself is absolutely fine.
The highlights themselves could be more extensive, but it’s the sheer banality of the analysis which makes me wish for Monday morning, conference calls and Excel spreadsheets.
For whatever reason, the show has developed a policy of employing a series of current players and managers to analyse the weekend’s fixtures. Billy Dodds, Scott, McDonald, Mark Wilson, Keith Lasley, Danny Lennon, Steven Thompson, Stuart McCall and the rest. A rotating cast of current Scottish football professionals who pitch up in the BBC studios of a late weekend to offer their opinions on the football.
While Sportscene is no stranger to the ex-player-cum-pundit – a trait of every football review show everywhere – they seem to be increasingly attracted to the Steven Thompsons and Scott McDonalds of the world.
I’m sure they’re all lovely blokes but here’s the problem: they tell you absolutely nothing about the games they are analysing.
Surely the point of bringing in current players is that they can shed a particular light on the games that ex-players, journalists or fans never could? Maybe they could tell you that their team normally plays a certain formation against Motherwell to counteract their wingers; or that they decided to play a high defensive line for a particular reason. Just some titbit of insider information we as viewers can gobble up. Sportscene could be the Hollywood Reporter of football, except less backstage Nicholas Cage stories and more tactical analysis on why Gary Locke’s a hopeless manager.
Instead, what we get is more fence-sitting than your average episode of Emmerdale and analysis blander than Dulux’s cream colour chart.
Every controversial incident is treated with as little opinion as humanly possible. Last season, Keith Lasley spent so long trying to avoid having an opinion on an incident in a Motherwell game that he was in danger of delaying the start of Match of the Day 2.
And what do we learn about the games from a tactical perspective?
‘He’s put a good ball in there and he’s finished it well’
‘He really should have tackled him there’
Cheers guys, I couldn’t have seen that for myself.
Let me be clear – I don’t blame the players or the managers. To have a strong opinion may put them in an awkward situation with their colleagues and opponents and, if I were in the same position, I would be as non-committal as them. Imagine criticising Jim Goodwin and then realising you play him the following weekend…now there’s a real sense of dread. Equally, I can understand why current players and managers don’t want to give away in-game tactics.
Instead, it should be the BBC’s job to avoid employing them on such a regular basis. If one or two (Thompson, for example) look like they might make a decent career in the media after they retire, there’s no harm to bring them in now and again to learn their trade alongside someone more experienced at analysing games in an articulate manner. Just don’t sit him alongside Mark Wilson.
I can think of two alternatives.
One is to make the show ‘highlights only’. Either cut the show down to 30 minutes from next season and pack everything in, or keep the show the same length and increase the highlights from all fixtures (and maybe even add in a quick round up of all Championship games). Some of the highlights currently last barely a few minutes as it is.
The second option is to employ better pundits. Along with their smattering of ex-players currently on the books (Nevin, Stewart etc.) who seem happy enough to voice a strong opinion, there are plenty of journalists in the Scottish football industry who analyse football on a full-time basis.
Some of these journalists appear on other TV and radio shows within the BBC, but yet never appear on Sportscene. Not all of them would be suited to analyse games on the television in a succinct manner, but there are more than a few broadcast journalists who could provide a level of insight not currently heard. Footballers are often dismissive of people who ‘haven’t played the game’, as if their opinions are invalid. In fact, quite often, with the distance of watching games from the sidelines, journalists (and fans) can appreciate a greater understanding of the flow of games; of tactics; and the unravelling of human decision-making.
Maybe no journalists want to step into the breach, but surely the BBC should at least be asking. After all, it couldn’t be much worse.
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