New season, and isn’t great to have fans back? I know we keep saying it, but isn’t it great? Great to have the fans back, it’s great. Haven’t you missed fans? Isn’t it great to have them back? Anyway here’s a few thoughts on some of the 5 live broadcast team.
John Murray: For me, the best commentator around. One of the very few of the modern-era that isn’t trying to get himself over, but is confident in his own voice and style and brings everything to life perfectly. Amiable and friendly, without degenerating too far into bantz~! mode. Happily slides up and down the friendliness scale between “cordial” and “chummy” depending on who he’s working with.
Michael Brown: Seems to immediately lose track of what he’s saying immediately after he starts speaking. Waffles on for hours without really making a point about anything. Speaks entirely in rote-learned soundbites that often contradict each other. Does the Alan Smith extendy-voice-growl thing when describing something, e.g. “He gets the ball, and driiiives into the box.” Doesn’t seem to understand anything about anything, but enjoys games with lots of fouling.
Alistair Bruce-Ball: Here are the teams, A. Player left out, I wonder how that’ll affect your fantasy football team? B. Player hasn’t scored for 4 games, have you taken him out of your fantasy football team? The referee today is C. Unit, he’s usually good when you’ve got D. Player as captain in your fantasy football team. Oh, there’s been two goals and a red card in the time I’ve been talking about fantasy football, hopefully they’ll be good news for your fantasy football team, let me just find out who was involved…
Clinton Morrison: An enjoyable ex-pro perspective. Good chemistry with most of the lads, especially Murray and Steve Crossman. Comparatively sane and stoic against the likes of Savage and Sutton. Ends 70% of his sentences with “at this precise moment”, which sounds like it should be annoying but isn’t because he’s too endearing.
Conor McNamara: Bit too obviously a Man Utd fan for my liking. Tries a bit too hard to be eloquent for no reason and it makes some passages of play sound a bit choppy. Does the thing where he’ll hand over to the analyst by saying their full name to end a sentence, which makes it sound like he’s trying to drop them in it for something. “Chance wasted by Nicolas Pepe there, and two packets of hobnobs have gone missing from the kitchen, Mark Lawrenson.” [RADIO GLARING]
Karen Carney: Knows her shit. Good analysis of matches and avoids the shock-jock wankery of some of her peers. Sent football twitter into meltdown by opining that the COVID-enforced break of the 2019-20 season might have benefitted Leeds promotion bid. (I mean, is it that unreasonable an opinion)? Social media target because she’s a woman covering football and it makes certain men feel very threatened. Seems to hate Arsenal 🙁
Alistair Bruce-Ball: I actually quite like him, he’s good at quickly describing the action but in a way that doesn’t feel rushed.
Chris Sutton: A man who is very much tired of London. Everything is marginally disappointing in his eyes. Constantly mardy with everyone and everything, though his description of Turkey’s “wall of meat” during the Euros was amusing. Doesn’t seem to enjoy anything about modern football apart from when strikers get away with fouling people. Has carved out a broadcasting niche as “The Angry Alan Partridge of football” but without most of the humour and all of the cringe (wall of meat notwithstanding).
Robbie Savage: Plays up to the fact that everyone thinks he’s a bit of a knob, but his in-match analysis is usually pretty good (apart from during Wales games). Used to do that thing where he’d say “Listen,” before trying to make a point, except he’d use it at the beginning of every sentence so it sounded like his co-presenters keep drifting off when he’s talking.
Ian Dennis: The quintessential radio “safe pair of hands”, he’s good at what he does and makes everything an enjoyable listen. Also, there’s the Bono incident…