By Mark Murphy

Birmingham chairman David Gold was all-of-a-tizzy in a recent 5Live debate on the (un)sustainability of Premier League debt, declaring Manchester United’s “£500m” debts and “£30m” annual interest repayments as sustainable “with comfort.”

When it was pointed out that the figures were “£700m” and “actually £70m.” Gold tried to laugh this off: “Its going up as we speak,” but had to concede: “It is worrying.” Not as worrying, you may think, as a Premier League chairman arguing that Premier League debt is sustainable while, almost literally, not knowing the half of it.

Meanwhile, its “the week before the season starts” on Piers Morgan’s Mail calendar, which will be news to the HUNDREDS…OF…THOUSANDS who thought they were at their clubs’ season-openers last week – a quarter of a million at Championship games alone.

Last year, it would have been news to BBC Television, too. But they’ve discovered where Adrian Chiles’ team disappears to every-other-season. “The Football League Show” is the upshot.

ITV’s “The Championship”, with ITV football’s only true talent, Matt Smith, was excellent. Ad-break-to-ad-break football, punctuated only by informative features, invariably about clubs’ financial strains. By comparison, “The Football League Show” is shambolic.

When programme reviews mentioned the curious interjection of a blonde woman, I thought they meant Lizzie Greenwood-Hughes reading viewers emails, not the ITV film which filled thirty-seven seconds where Torquay should have been.

The emails were fun…apart from the words and how Greenwood-Hughes read them. While ten minutes of Ian Holloway and Steve Claridge telling us what “terrific blokes” all league managers were was eleven minutes too much.

And the show played to an “industrial-noise” background, reminiscent of what made the film “Eraserhead” so unsettling.

These shows do improve. This show must.

 

ESPN’s coverage of the Russia/Argentina friendly resembled Eurosport with a bit more money. Their commentator was shut in a studio (when the picture went green and silent, so did he).

And his stabs at Russian and Argentine accents suggested guesswork or exposure to stereotypes (he even threw in an unannounced “Scoatland”, which would have had them running for the subtitles in Edinburgh). Hence “RomUN PavlyuchenkA” and more “Ys” in “Arshavin” than Yaya Toure in a yellow yam-shop.

And his piece-de-resistance was this clumsy segue: “The Russian made the impact Wayne Rooney did when he scored for Everton against Arsenal as a 16-year-old…and, ironically, on ESPN this Saturday is Everton against Arsenal.”

We’ll be pining for Setanta yet.