Alan Shearer (from The Telegraph)

[TonyGilroy]

Match of the Day pundit Alan Shearer was at a loss when asked to comment on Newcastle striker Hatem Ben Arfa. One of the truisms about our world is that it is filled with things Alan Shearer knows nothing about: glaciers, DNA, the Middle East peace process. But you rather hoped Newcastle's new star signing wouldn't be one of them.

Assuming Shearer can operate a personal computer (don't head it, Alan, use your hands), and assuming he hasn't gnawed through his one working telephone line, here are a few facts he could have pulled off Wikipedia about Hatem Ben Arfa:


1) He played for France at every youth level before making his full debut three years ago.

2) He made his Champions League debut for Lyon against Manchester United before signing for Marseille for €11 million.

3) Nobody knows his real name; upon leaving a football ground he dons a long black cloak and simply dissolves into the night.

Actually, I just made the last one up, but for Shearer's purposes it might as well be true.

You may, or may not, have heard of Ben Arfa before he moved here, but then you aren't paid to talk about him on television.

"No one really knows a great deal of him," Shearer asserted confidently as he introduced highlights of Ben Arfa's performance against Everton.

It was an astonishingly deficient piece of analysis, for which his earlier golden nugget of insight – "It's weird seeing Birmingham wear red, isn't it?" – curiously failed to atone.

Perhaps it was just the strain of having to maintain two separate hairstyles, best described as
'Yul Brynner' at the front and 'Weetabix' at the back.

Unless Shearer comes to terms with his receding hairline, before long he's going to be the owner of the world's largest forehead.

Being Shearer must be a strange experience indeed. Clearly, on some level, he is able to perceive certain things.

He is aware that there is a white ball on a screen and that men in coloured clothing are running after it, and he is also vaguely aware that he is expected to comment on this.

But when he tries, his sentences are invariably dim and childlike: "they should have went on and won that game"; "everyone done their job, and they done it very well"; "they should have went two-nil up".

In fact, the easiest explanation is that Shearer is simply a very large, very well-paid child who is somehow directed every Saturday night to a sofa and filmed for television.

The mere act of a team wearing their third kit is enough to put a kink in his sense of reality.Of course, television in general is stuffed to the last pixel with the inane, the irksome and the plain contemptible. But in most cases, we can choose not to watch them.

With football coverage, our sense of grievance is amplified. This is purely because we are compelled to drill through the deadening husk of the studio segments in order to get what we actually came for – the creamy footballing kernels buried within.

And somehow, Match of the Day vexes us most of all. Rightfully, we hold it to a higher standard. After a lacklustre few years, there were green shoots of resuscitation.

Alan Hansen's evisceration of Arsenal's Theo Walcott after he had scored a hat-trick against Blackpool was brazen, persuasive, deliciously controversial. But the large, imbecilic dent Shearer continues to etch in the Match of the Day sofa reminds us that this is a programme that it simply not what it used to be.

Even the cherished Goal of the Month competition has been warped and defiled beyond measure.

There's no prize – not even premium bonds – and the jaunty The Life of Riley that used to be its soundtrack has long gone, replaced this season by some execrable piece of music that manages simultaneously to channel late-1990s dancehall and a young woman being tickled to death.

Yet it also serves as a reminder of why we keep tuning in every week – great goals, pulsating action and gripping narrative.

The highlight of Saturday's programme occurred not in the studio, but at the Stadium of Light.

Darren Bent's last-gasp winner hit the net, and as 38,000 Wearsiders roared in delight, on the touchline could be glimpsed the glowering, contorted visage of a furious Arsène Wenger.

It was one of those glorious tableaux of drama and disaster that only sport can bestow.

Or as Shearer might put it: "It done great."

[RidgeRider]

Wow, to say the author is not a big fan is quite an understatement eh? I guess he feel's safe in the belief that Alan doesn't read the paper either.

[Jimpav]

It always smacks of hypocrisy when a journalist gets on their high horse to crticise a footballer for their punditry/commentary/journalism when said Journalist is hardly renoun for being one of the best English players to have played in the PL and neither were they the best player of his generation in the England squad.

Okay Shearer is a bit dull but not as drab as having to read a lazy attack on one of the more likeable football personalities.

I watch MOTD for the goals not to have Shearer reguritate facts from Wikipedia.

[AlFayedsChequebook]

It always smacks of hypocrisy when a journalist gets on their high horse to crticise a footballer for their punditry/commentary/journalism when said Journalist is hardly renoun for being one of the best English players to have played in the PL and neither were they the best player of his generation in the England squad.

Okay Shearer is a bit dull but not as drab as having to read a lazy attack on one of the more likeable football personalities. 

I watch MOTD for the goals not to have Shearer reguritate facts from Wikipedia.

I am sorry but Shearer is the epitome of the 'intelligence is overrated' brigade. He has no personality or analytical expertise but simply gets paid to sit on a couch fawning over players. If he never appeared on MOTD it would be a blessing for this country.

He is also the culprit of dismissing Bobby Z without giving a reason other than 'he is not international class'. Shearer is a Buffoon who's contribution to MOTD and the BBC is on a par with a benefit scrounger.

[The Equalizer]

I've got to side with Alf's Chequebook here - Shearer has no place as a football pundit.

The term pundit itself serves as the job description: "A person who makes comments or judgments in an authoritative manner; an expert; a critic".

Okay, Shearer's got the credentials as an 'expert' at playing the game. But I think he's proven that he's not worth having in the studio as anything other than something to blind you from the glare reflecting off his bonce.

There must be hundreds of ex-footballers queuing up for a job as a pundit. Why not try someone else for once? And can someone please return Richard Keys to London Zoo's gorilla pen?

[WhiteJC]

I've got to side with Alf's Chequebook here - Shearer has no place as a football pundit.

The term pundit itself serves as the job description: "A person who makes comments or judgments in an authoritative manner; an expert; a critic".

ex - as in "has-been"
spert - as in "drip under pressure"

[White Noise]

I am sick of everyone in public life being third rate. Why is there no-one who is passably good at their jobs anymore. I am far too young to spend all my media consuming time finding fault with the mouthpiece but Garth Crooks, Eamonn Holmes and Hugh Edwards I have had my fill of mentally deficient tokenism. The number of people who fulfil the basic requirements of football journalism can be numbered on the fingers of one hand.

It never used to be this way. Where are the great broadcasters of this generation? Why is mediocrity allowed to reign?

What annoys me most about Shearer is his portrayal of himself as an experienced football manager who would have made all the wise decisions the managers he commentates on make and none of their mistakes. Not an ounce of humility or self knowledge in the bloke.

The only decent football discussion available in the mainstream media is 'The Sunday Supplement' and that is still three fifths nonsense.

[SmithyFFC]

Shearer is for sure the worst pundit to be hired by the BBC, ITV, FIVE or Sky! The mans a joke.

[Terry Tibbs]

Genius, JC!  :011:

I've got to side with Alf's Chequebook here - Shearer has no place as a football pundit.

The term pundit itself serves as the job description: "A person who makes comments or judgments in an authoritative manner; an expert; a critic".

ex - as in "has-been"
spert - as in "drip under pressure"

[finnster01]

Is it just me or has the average pundit taken a big hit for the worse the last good few years?

Remember the days of Saint and Greavsie, even old Jimmy tried his best to sound vaguely intelligent and pick the odd big word once in a while, which you could tell was a struggle but at least he tried. And at least he was an honest chap. Used to love that show. They didn't talk down to the punter either with loads of attitude on top like they do now.

Today, it is just a bunch of know-it-all opinionated has-beens who has been told to have an opinion and never to change their views based on a decent debate/chat. It has become a tabloid joke.

[timmyg]

Such a proper undressing from the author. Just compare it to this take down of a different sport but similar complaint.

I'd re-post some of it, but it's a little profane.

But just guess which writing has garnered nearly 38,000 hits alone?

[HatterDon]

Such a proper undressing from the author. Just compare it to this take down of a different sport but similar complaint.

I'd re-post some of it, but it's a little profane.

But just guess which writing has garnered nearly 38,000 hits alone?

Well The Telegraph IS a newspaper, and as for rating by the number of hits, the surfboarding squirrel on YouTube has more hits than anything in the universe. That, like the number of hits on the NFL blogger's site just says more about the readership than the quality of the writing.

[timmyg]

Such a proper undressing from the author. Just compare it to this take down of a different sport but similar complaint.

I'd re-post some of it, but it's a little profane.

But just guess which writing has garnered nearly 38,000 hits alone?

Well The Telegraph IS a newspaper, and as for rating by the number of hits, the surfboarding squirrel on YouTube has more hits than anything in the universe. That, like the number of hits on the NFL blogger's site just says more about the readership than the quality of the writing.

Well, quality, yes, but there's a reason (in this particular case -- not vouching for any squirrels) there's a demand for it. American journalists would never come out and chastise a commentator or analyst or announcer like Drew Magary did/does (however juvenile). As a result, blogs have stepped in and filled a void. Sites like FireJoeMorgan, AwfulAnnouncing, and at times Deadspin, have provided some pretty good anathema.

And in all honesty, I wish there were some similar sites across the pond. MOTD, Paul Merson, Adrian Chiles -- awful, awful, awful.

[LBNo11]

...I still cringe with embarrassment on the fading recollection of 'Elbows' Shearer whilst commentating on a world cup game, trying to get approval for his inane, fatuous comments from our former manager.

Football punditry seems to have gone the way of politics in that iconic 'personalties' get more attention than people of substance who actually know what they are talking about...

[Oakeshott]

"I am sick of everyone in public life being third rate. Why is there no-one who is passably good at their jobs anymore"

I think Jeff Stelling is absolutely top class on the Sky sports programme during Saturday afternoons, and Andy Gray is to my mind far and away the best commentator on games. But I agree with you that the MOTD team aren't great.

[Rambling_Syd_Rumpo]

Alan Shearer - was a good footballer in his day now has the personality of a walnut
Lineker unfunny, smug, crisp selling, muppet

Hanson-does know what he is talking about but can repeat himself repeatedly

Lawrenson got lost on the way to the pub and found himself in a TV studio

MOTD should be the jewel in the crown of TV football shows but it is so stale and vanilla at the moment you would still think it was 1981,shame on you BBC

[Peppo]

There was a world cup game once, I can't remember which one, and before the game Lee Dixon began his intro "We don't know an awful lot about this team" and then started to describe the one player he had heard of as "He's a very good player" It was shocking! We were paying him bags loads of money to be there in the finals and he simply couldn't be bothered to do more than 10 seconds of research to discover who their best player was. Just sums up the BBC generally really.

[finnster01]

And here in the US we have the annoying Irish leprechaun Tommy Smyth on ESPN who can never shut up, does not have a clue, and thinks he knows everything donning a very smug grin in the process. He even was Grand Marshal for the St Paddy's day parade in NYC and all of my Irish mates gave him absolute hell. They can't stand him.

To top it off, he never ever did anything on the field. According to Wikipedia his playing career isn't exactly Sir Bobbie Charlton: "Smyth moved to the United States in 1963 following a brief football career with a local Irish team. In America, he played with the Shamrock Club in the German American Soccer League as well as for the Boston Beacons of the North American Soccer League."   

[timmyg]

And here in the US we have the annoying Irish leprechaun Tommy Smyth on ESPN who can never shut up, does not have a clue, and thinks he knows everything donning a very smug grin in the process. He even was Grand Marshal for the St Paddy's day parade in NYC and all of my Irish mates gave him absolute hell. They can't stand him.

To top it off, he never ever did anything on the field. According to Wikipedia his playing career isn't exactly Sir Bobbie Charlton: "Smyth moved to the United States in 1963 following a brief football career with a local Irish team. In America, he played with the Shamrock Club in the German American Soccer League as well as for the Boston Beacons of the North American Soccer League."   

It's in all American sports. Networks just hire based off name recognition.

Joe Morgan: gleefully ignorant of statistical analysis, IN FREAKING BASEBALL.

Emmitt Smith: Uses phrases such as "debacled", "blowed out" and "rightsize the ship." Seriously, I wish I was making this up.

Or the pinnacle of sports announcing in the USA: Monday Night Football. John Gruden: Entire transcript consists of "THIS GUY ..... THIS GUY .... THIS GUY ...."; Ron Jawowarowski: Entire transcript consists of "[enter player's action] IN THE NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE!!!"

And need we bring up Dave O'Brien at the '06 World Cup??

[White Noise]

Match of the Day may be a cosy golf and social club with a football show attached... but don't be fooled by the idea of new dross


By Martin Samuel


Last updated at 11:37 PM on 20th September 2010


And he nearly had me. Right up until that list of people Stan Collymore would like to see on the sofa for Match of the Day.

To recap: 'Andy Cole, Gianfranco Zola, Paolo Di Canio, Ian Wright, Teddy Sheringham, Eric Cantona. I want to see Zola disagree with Sheringham or Di Canio giving us an insight, or Jurgen Klinsmann next to Cole and Wright talking about what Fernando Torres is going through and how to change.'

This would be different, how? A few ex-footballers, almost all from the biggest clubs, some of whom happen to be Stan's mates. Meet the new dross, same as the old dross. And no defenders, I notice.

Fed up with Match of the Day? Who would you have as pundits? Tell us what you would change by leaving your comment below...
Anchor man: Former England striker Gary Lineker fronts Match of the Day's 'golf and social club'
Has Klinsmann or Sheringham got any more insight into Torres than, say, Alan Shearer? The last time I saw Teddy was at City Airport and he was heading off somewhere to play poker.
Klinsmann is a resident of Orange County, California, and did not last a year in his sole club coaching job, with Bayern Munich. He went to Barcelona in the Champions League as Munich's coach announcing he was going to fight fire with fire; his team were 4-0 down at half-time.
Now such experiences could make him a devastatingly insightful pundit, or not, but if Collymore's criticism of Shearer is that he showed scant knowledge of Newcastle goalscorer Hatem Ben Arfa on Saturday, despite his eight caps for France, where is the certainty Klinsmann will be better versed?
As for Di Canio, what insight is he likely to provide? How to avoid playing tricky away matches in the north of England? He is not really your go-to guy for Newcastle info, either. In four and a half seasons with West Ham United, Di Canio did not make it to Tyneside for a single league game, and of the 17 league matches the club played away against teams that finished in the top four in his time, Di Canio featured in five.
Collymore makes some valid points in his broadside against the general cosiness of the BBC's Match of the Day coverage, but the changes he offers up would merely swap one cartel for another. We have all heard Ian Wright talk football for the BBC. He quit the corporation's England coverage in 2008 claiming he had been trammelled to a role as court jester.
This could be because three years earlier when England lost to Northern Ireland - a match in which his son, Shaun Wright-Phillips, was given a rare chance by Sven Goran Eriksson, but performed poorly and was substituted after 54 minutes - Wright sat in the studio in a tight-lipped sulk, claiming he did not want to talk about it.
Italian job: Collymore has called for West Ham United legend Paolo Di Canio to replace Alan Shearer
Wright's earnings for this job were reported to be in the region of £50,000, which also places into relief Collymore's bizarre claim that most ex-professionals would work gratis.
There was a time when the most charismatic figures in the game, managers such as Brian Clough and Malcolm Allison - and, yes, Jimmy Hill - would argue the toss about England and it could be electric.
The modern equivalent would be to get one of Jose Mourinho or Sir Alex Ferguson in with Martin O'Neill and an agent provocateur - because there truly is no modern equivalent of Hill, a player, manager, chairman, director, broadcaster, television executive and union advocate who, now 82, should be knighted before it is too late - but Collymore is hardly going for broke with his wish list.
Hell, he is not even advocating roping in the most entertaining voices from the recent Premier League era, such as Roy Keane or, in the future, Gary Neville. Instead hardly a controversialist. He wants to see him disagree with Sheringham. Hardly Clough and Don Revie head-tohead on Yorkshire TV is it?
Anyway, it is not just Match of the Day that has a problem. As analysis has become more technical, it has also become more cautious, so that Jamie Redknapp uses an adjective that would be commonplace in any pub conversation, diabolical, to describe the performance of Liverpool striker Torres at Birmingham City, and wakes up to headlines the next day.
There is a hint of bitterness at not having this big stage in Collymore's outburst - 'amazing some journos are wetting themselves about Shearer's analysis of Torres, as some of us have said all week that he needs better service' - yet while his employers, talkSPORT, promote pundits with a singularly confrontational style, sometimes the points they make are lost in the noise.
Irreplaceable: There is no modern equivalent to the brilliant Jimmy Hill
It is precisely because Redknapp is not a ranter that his comment on Torres caused ripples. Similarly, the other major television-driven controversy of this season was Alan Hansen's assertion that Theo Walcott, of Arsenal, lacked a football brain. There are probably people making observations every bit as contentious on talkSPORT, but if everyone is shouting, nobody is heard.
Where Collymore strikes a chord is with his barbs at the Match of the Day work ethic. You will notice one leading name missing from his criticisms, that of sofa regular Mark Lawrenson. This may be an oversight, or it could be because, like the rest of us, Collymore regularly sees Lawrenson in press boxes around the country where he is a guest for BBC Radio 5 Live. Hansen is spotted in the directors' box at Anfield, Shearer at Newcastle, but the feeling pervades among professional rivals that Match of the Day is an exclusive golf and social club with a football show attached.
The BBC establishing its lavish base in lovely Cape Town during the 2010 World Cup when the heart of the tournament was in Johannesburg did little to alter perceptions. It runs deeper than Shearer not doing his homework on Ben Arfa.
After all, on December 15, 2008, Collymore tipped Al Ahly, of Egypt, to win the World Club Championship, unaware they had been knocked out of the tournament at the preliminary stage 24 hours earlier, so accidents happen.
It is that nobody on the show is ever going to be challenged on his opinion, and this breeds complacency. They are all pals, so an opinion that is shallow or poorly researched, will be smiled through indulgently.
Hansen becomes animated by bad defending but if, after five games without a win, he offers that West Ham are in for a tough season, nobody pushes him to dig deeper.
Talking tactics: Arsene Wenger and Sir Alex Ferguson would be dream pundits to provide all the talking points
Fed up with Match of the Day? Who would you have as pundits? Tell us what you would change by leaving your comment below...In the end, the problem is that Match of the Day is basically a highlights package show with a little analysis thrown in, and that is a very restrictive format. The attempt to vamp the format with Match of the Day 2 is hit and miss and the most insightful voice on the programme is still the conventional Lee Dixon, not over-hyped characters such as Robbie Savage.
Sky try to soup up their Monday night coverage, as it often features the least sexy televised fixture of the weekend, with wizardry but for all the computer-generated graphics and space-age surroundings, it still boils down to two blokes talking about football.
Action cannot be guaranteed, so these shows hang on the analysts. One would sit through the post-match discussion of the most rigid stalemate, were we returning to the studio to hear Ferguson, Mourinho and Arsene Wenger. By the same token, noticing that for a recent England international, ITV regular Andy Townsend was joined by Gareth Southgate and Danny Murphy made one wonder who had pulled out. Where was the Clough-like big name that would give the panel some punch? Maybe they are simply not around any more; or not interested.
So, yes, Match of the Day can be lazy and comfortable, but Collymore's alternatives are no better. You will hear more interesting observations and details from 15 minutes talking with David Pleat in the press room before the game, than you will at half-time; but no doubt Pleat would be regarded by many as a dinosaur.
This is where we get it wrong. If the BBC wanted to start afresh it should be with one eye on Sky's brilliant cricket coverage, and the depth of knowledge on display. There is no point replacing one chummy monopoly with another.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1313747/Martin-Samuel-Dont-fooled-new-dross-idea-Match-Day.html#ixzz108jfNhAp