Hansen, Lawrenson and Shearer's punditry has been, to use a phrase I read elsewhere, a 'risible disgrace'. The comments about Balotelli were not only offensively unfair, they were just plain wrong ('he hasn't achieved anything yet' etc etc). The blinkered, biased comments are unfortunately only the tip of the iceberg. What really gets me is the shear ineptitude of these men who are paid a very tidy sum indeed to talk about football.
They appear to do little or no research prior to games (the least we should expect given their wages which we pay for through the licence fee) and often admit to not knowing much about certain players or teams. I haven't heard of lots of the players in Euro 2012, but it's not my paid occupation to know about these things. Hansen in particular could easily be replaced by a tape recorder with 5 or 6 set phrases to be played at intervals between Lineker's atrocious puns.
With the likes of Michael Cox (ESPN/Zonal Marking), James Richardson et al (The Guardian podcast) and a plethora of exceptional European expert analysts/bloggers (Honigstein, Auclair, Sid Lowe) providing such insightful analysis, why do we have to put up with three blokes who just turn up and spout meaningless, stereotyped drivel at us while laughing at each other's (piss poor) jokes?
I know the 'AC Jimbo' (cringe) types are not the most popular on here (and I for one can't abide Barry Glendenning) but at least they talk about what they see on the pitch, do their research and speak from knowledge. Isn't it about time we stopped giving outrageously dull ex-players this national platform to spoon feed us their jaundiced ill-informed bullshit?<br /><br />-- Sat Jun 30, 2012 3:14 am --<br /><br />As for Lawrenson or whoever it was (they all merge in to one massive whirlwind of bullshit in my head) calling him 'stupid', he seems to have mastered English in a remarkably short amount of time. Let's pack Hansen off to Italy and see how he does.
