A poor team change by ITV

It was rather surreal watching ITV football commentator Clive Tyldesley (above) broadcast about his demotion this week. Mind you if I’d been replaced by Sam Matterface as the station’s voice of England matches I’d have been pretty miffed as well. Matterface is another Darren Fletcher in that he puncuates his commentaries with endless, and rarely very interesting, stats. This obsession with how many goals a team has scored from left-wing corners or how many free kicks they’ve conceded in the first half of matches is a serious irritation for me, but then I can remember the glory days of Barry Davies and Brian Moore, men who could paint pictures with words.

And they didn’t need halfwits sitting alongside them stating the bleeding obvious.