I’ve had quite a few rants about the poor quality of the coverage our game gets on TV in this country, but one thing that’s always irked me more than anything else over the years is that our pundits seem to find it incredibly difficult to even remotely criticise players or managers representing our clubs.
I’m not sure if it’s something to do with an ‘old pal’s act’ or certain clauses written into their contracts forbidding certain people from being pulled up for their inadequacies, but it’s a bit embarrassing when you watch a guy representing a Scottish club making a glaring error on TV, only for the commentator to inexplicably attempt to make excuses for it.
Take the first half of tonight’s Aalborg-Celtic match for example. I think it would be fair to say that Celtic missed a couple of absolutely gilt-edged opportunities to score in that first half, but instead of giving criticism where it was most certainly due, we had to listen to the likes of Craig Burley (absolutely insufferable by the way!) and Rob McLean (boredom personified) trying to cover it all up. Do us a favour in future, gentlemen – please just tell it as it is instead of trying to make us think that we actually saw something different, ok?
Can you imagine someone like SKY’s Andy Gray taking that approach? No danger – he’d have been getting stuck into those very highly paid players for not being able to carry out a basic part of their jobs, and rightly so. That’s the difference, unfortunately.
It’s not only when Scottish clubs are in European competition that this problem exists, though. It’s perhaps not quite as bad as it used to be in the domestic game as some of our commentators have attempted to toughen their acts up a little in recent years, but in comparison to some of the major companies down south I’d still say that the pundits up here are far too lenient when it comes to dishing out criticism to footballers in this country.
TV sadly still influences many people and I can’t help thinking that this is perhaps one of the reasons why so many of us just accept some of the mediocrity that Scottish football has to offer. Maybe if we did have more people on our screens up here like Gray, Tyler and even Pearce we may get a slightly less tolerant paying customer, why may just end up leading to some positive action being taken to improve our game.
I’m starting havering now, so I’ll leave it at that……!
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John Hartson and Rob McLean were practically greetin? at the end over how desperately unlucky Celtic were tonight. A tragedy of Shakespearean proportions it would seem. And, as you say, not a word of criticism?
McLean is so uninspiring for a presenter – so bland it’s not true. I actually don’t think Hartson’s all that bad, but don’t even get me started on Craig Burley!
Interesting radio interview on Wed morning with Tom Boyd – he said Celtic had given some good away performances in Europe without getting the results…. “maybe because we’ve not had the benefit of some Scottish referees”. So there you have it, folks …..first Andy Walker admitting he used to “embarrassed” at some of the decisions he got as a Celtic player, and now Tom Boyd admitting the advantages offered to his team by Scottish referees.
They must feel that they have been away from the playing side of football in Scotland for long enough to throw in the odd remark like this. They can certainly be confident that absolutely nothing will ever be done about it.
GRRRRRR!