Premier League

As I sit here on a Sunday evening after the next instalment of Sky’s determination to convince us all that football is great, I wonder if a change of tactic would be better. Hear me out with this because already I can hear some of you thinking, “What are you on about Ross?”

Every two or three months we could all sit there and predict which matches will be on Friday, Saturday, Sunday or even Monday. Well any day of the week, really. Yesterday’s ‘MERSEYSIDE vs MANCHESTER’ games could have been very anti-climactic. Everton were hardly setting the world alight and bought a defensive midfielder this week, while Manchester City seem desperate to confuse everyone with Pep’s tactics. Yet Everton overcame an odd City display of falling over and shouting at the referee.

Liverpool’s 1-1 at Old Trafford, and it seemed that Sky hadn’t learned from the game at Anfield. Jose is hardly going to play open, attacking football in a game like this, though this time it seemed to be more of a case of his players being unable to, rather than Jose not wanting too. It all got better for the TV showcase when Mourinho brought on everybody’s favourite substitute Fellaini, elbows and all. I actually felt for poor Pogba being blinded by Liverpool’s away kit when giving away a penalty. That should be looked into by the FA.

I do have some suggestions for Sky though, as this weekend’s choices were as obvious as ever.

Sky should hold back sometimes with their choices. I know we all can’t be clairvoyants and predict how a team’s fortunes will go. But come on, throw the odd basement battle in there. Hull’s game showed that with a bit of imagination, a team with a new manager at home would show more intrigue than two teams trying to bore us all into a Sunday snooze.

At the bottom, even at this stage of the season, teams are getting desperate for points. There will be times players try stuff that makes us wonder how they became footballers in the first place. Nervous defenders making suicidal back passes, midfielders running up and down the pitch even before kick-off, anything to drag their team out of the dreaded drop zone. Imagine a team that’s gone 6 games without a point and losing 0-3 with ten mins to go, what a great time to pan to the chairman and see if he has already left to print a P45 for the poor bloke only 20 yards away. To me that’s more entertaining.

Yes, the quality might not be so on-point. But sometimes we need a laugh and despair. So come on Sky there’s often two ends to a league table.