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As we bade a fond farewell to the Match Of The Day studio at Television Centre last Sunday, with a dimming of the lights and a compilation of football moments past, my instinct was to question whether it really was an occasion for us, the viewers?
Surely, the real significance of the BBC’s flagship football programme moving north to Salford is that it has done so as part of the BBC’s attempts to make the TV licence fee work better for the people who shell out £145.50 a year on it.
But fair enough, you may say. The Corporation were told something had to be done, and they did it.
Except that, just as presenter Gary Lineker was resetting his sat-nav and a group of staff were boxing up the crockery, word was out that one of the show’s long-term pundits, Alan Hansen, was warming the sofa every week to the tune of £40,000 a show. Catchy little tune, that, especially against the current economic backdrop.
So did we, the Beeb’s financial backers, get our money’s worth on the evidence of the first broadcast from the show’s new HD-friendly home? Well, we had to wait a little longer than usual to find out on Saturday night, as the programme opened with a Christopher Eccleston-voiced piece celebrating 25 years of their new neighbour, Sir Alex Ferguson.
Lineker suggested it was therefore ‘only fitting’ they were all now in Salford. So I suppose when Andre Villas-Boas celebrates his silver jubilee at Stamford Bridge, it’s all back down to The Smoke, then?
Anyway, then it was on with the revamped show and some new tricks which were, er, very much business as usual. Chairs instead of a sofa for Lineker, Hansen and fellow pundit Mark Lawrenson, and a split-screen stats graphic which challenged for space alongside the managers’ post-match interviews. Apart from that? Well, we were treated to team line-ups ahead of the mini match highlights, and an early look at the League table before Lineker’s final wrap-up. So, all in all, different, but somehow kind of the same.
Which is sort of the problem, really. And, following Hansen’s salary revelations: if we’re to be made aware that we, the licence-fee payers, are getting better value for money because the east of Manchester is a cheaper place to do business than the west of London, are we not entitled to ask if the smooth old centre back from Clackmannanshire is delivering the goods?
Well the short answer for me has to be no, he isn’t. Not because he is any better or worse than any other ex-pro plying his punditry trade. Much of that is a matter of personal taste, anyway. It’s just that in spite of the new home, it was the same old story.
We got the regulation poking of gentle fun at the ex-centre forward from the two old centre halves and the usual reminder of Liverpool’s glory years. More worrying was the insipid analysis for the games Hansen covered (Blackburn v Chelsea and Aston Villa v Norwich), consisting pretty much of him commentating on what we were seeing. No tactics, no insight, no help.
You’ll see a lot worse than Hansen. What’s more, you may feel far more offended by the 200-grand-a-week players he gets the big bucks to talk about. However, you can do something about that. You can stop going to watch them. Don’t help pay their wages.
But it’s illegal not to buy your season ticket to watch the BBC. And, therefore, we should expect more.
I think they're all ok as pundits. But that's the problem. As I have to watch them every week, ok isn't good enough. Dixon is the only one I would keep.
But who would you change them for? There aren't many who are any better. Souness is the only name to spring to mind.
