Match of the Day (1964– ) User Reviews

Premiership Football Where It Belongs

[bs3dc · 4 February 2007]

The best programme on Saturday night TV - well for football fans anyhow. Match of the day showing Premiership highlights as they should be shown with plenty of action, just enough incisive punditry, and the classic theme tune to boot.

Gary Lineker is far better as the host in my opinion than Des Lynam ever was and his laid-back presenting style balances well the frequent rants coming from the pundits about "sloppy defending." His wry look at the day's happenings can be quite amusing and prevents the panel from taking themselves too seriously.

The commentary for the matches is far better than it was on ITV, making you wish the BBC had the rights to more games. ITV constantly insist on using David Pleat, who seems clueless and comes out with gems like "the sight is in end" as he did in the Champions League Final of Arsenal v Barcelona. The BBC commentators seem more respected, especially John Motson, who clearly does his research before the game! The pundits are good, particularly Alan Hansen, who combines well with Mark Lawrenson through many years of working together both on the field and in the studio. Recently Alan Shearer has been a good addition to get a striker's viewpoint of the action rather than just the defenders'. Sometimes I wish they would do more research on the the smaller teams like Reading who have been doing extremely well in their first top-flight season (as of February 2007) as they occasionally make mistakes about how they did the previous season such as claiming they finished behind Sheffield Utd. Instead of which they often spend half the programme praising the same couple of players every week from the "big" teams, even if they clearly dived several times to gain penalties earlier that day.

One of the biggest advantages that Match of the Day has is that there are no adverts breaking up the programme every few minutes and reducing the time for actual highlights of the matches to be shown.

Another thing Match of the Day does well is that it tries to balance out the coverage so that they show the more interesting games first, taking away the bias that both ITV's "The Premiership" and Match of the day suffered from in the past where they would show 30 minutes of highlights from the Manchester Utd. game then barely 30 seconds of some of the other games, obviously infuriating many fans who wanted to see more of their team. Of course in this respect it is going to be difficult to please everyone since die-hards are going to believe that their team should be on first every week. The fact that the producers seem to listen to comments from viewers and do their best to improve the show does them credit. Long may it continue.

You can't win anything with kids.

[grossincoming3 · 6/10 · 4 October 2014]

This show used to be fantastic. Alan Hansen was a genius, pure genius. He was unbiased, ruthless,and diplomatic with his punditry. When Gerrard had a good game, you knew that he had a good game and when he had a bad one, you knew. Every pass he made, every run he made, every goal, every interchange, he'd analyze in the space of 2 minutes. A true connoisseur of the game, he could paint a picture in your head with the stroke of a few sentences. He revolutionized the world of sports punditry and turned it from an opinion based business into an art form. You also had Lawrenson, the Robin of the pair. He was there mainly for comedy relief, but he also had his moments of brilliance. Like Adam West and Burt Ward in 1966, the chemistry between them was top class. Opinions bouncing off one another, clear, concise, carrying a presence on screen, there was no stopping the former Liverpool defenders when on form and whenever Linekar tried to sneak something between them, it was always intercepted, reminiscent of their playing days. Now the show is a mess. The punditry is too robotic and there's more chemistry between a bowl of cornflakes and a plank of wood than there is with the likes of Phil Neville and Danny Murphy. The BBC have tried to bring in new blood and ostracize the old guard and it's come back to bite them. Here, I'll analyze some of the pundits:

Shearer: The only good pundit left. Has a great knowledge of the game. Shares good banter with Linekar, is entertaining on screen, his analysis is always on point and concise. Whenever he's on, he carries his punditry partner.

Murphy: Bland. He just says what you want to hear half of the time and is more suited for ITV with Chiles and his motley crew than he is the BBC. Most of the time when a team plays atrocious, he tries to mitigate it. Instead of lambasting the performance he'll feebly grumble, "Well they didn't do that bad did they. Put the defensive errors, the lack of chances created and the scoreline aside, they didn't do bad and they're sure to improve." Joke of a pundit.

Neville: Read 'Murphy'. There's no wonder why a petition was set up to get him axed from the show and no we don't need reminding of the fact that there was every week Phil. His brother should give him some lessons in punditry.

Ferdinand: #2Sidez to this guy. Sometimes he offers a refreshing insight, other times he's pretty dull. Hopefully we see more of him when he hangs his boots up in a few years time, I feel he has potential to be a good pundit.

Savage: Hilarious guy who's not utilized enough by the show. A wasted talent.

Gullit: Read Murphy. Just comments on the Dutch players most of the time.

And that's why MOTD has gone downhill in recent years.

Just perfect

[bob the moo · 30 December 2002]

Saturday night (not early evening mind you), BBC1. Laid-back presenters watch the highlights of that days premiership games, analysing the talking points of the game in there own indomitable fashion and disagreeing as they occasionally do.

Although Match of the Day is now limited to those competitions where the BBC still has the rights, this is still one of the best football highlights programmes on any UK network. ITV managed to out bid the BBC last round and got the rights. They already had poached Des Lynam but they tried to change things for their version. None of it worked and they have trimmed it back to copy MoTD. Proving that for 30 plus years the BBC have developed the perfect package of presenting style, humour and commentators.

With Des it was perfect but now with Gary Lineker it is still good. Both had a cool laid back air about them that really help the presenting style – they know to leave the extreme `getting worked up' stuff to the pundits. The bench is also good on the BBC, Hansen, Mark Lawernson etc are professionals and know what they're talking about. Occasionally they have a weak link but this is rare. Whereas ITV gets big names but the chemistry doesn't always work – usually they have managers between jobs (shown by Keegan leaving to go back and destroy Leeds!). The BBC commentators are great too – recognisable voices that we have grown up with who know how to use their voices to compliment the action, again this isn't always the case but they have a much better strike rate than ITV!

Overall this is where I want to watch my football and I can't wait till the next bidding round. Hopefully ITV will bare in mind the low ratings the programme gets and wonder if it is worth that much money, and BBC may be able to get by without breaking the bank. Can't wait to see it back again! If you're in any doubt that the BBC's MOTD is the place that the nation wants to see it's football then look at the ratings for games that both BBC and ITV show at the same time (world cup matches etc), by and large the BBC slaughter ITV which goes to show the reputation that the network has built over it's long career of MOTD. This is the place that the nation comes to for football (when it has the choice).

ITV may have had the money to outbid the BBC. And they may have had the lawyers to distance themselves legally from ITV Digital (no connection there then – duh) but ITV has done nothing but harm to the game by ducking out on their contract with the Nationwide division teams. Lets have the premiership highlights back on BBC before ITV mess those up too. There – that's my 10 cents!

Largely Irrelevant

[j-fernandez01 · 3/10 · 12 April 2009]

There was a time when ITV and the BBC had the monopoly on top-flight football. You either watched football on Saturday night's Match of the Day or Sunday's The Big Match or you didn't watch it at all.

Those days are gone.

Pubs actually emptied early on Saturday nights as beer soaked football fans streamed home in order to catch a few moments of their team. You always took a chance though, as the order the matches would be shown in was never published in advance. This was a 'trick' to ensure that the viewers would compliantly sit through every other game until theirs came on.

However Manchester United fans soon came to realised that even a goalless draw of theirs would be shown first, whereas the long suffering Arsenal fans knew that their 5-0 victories would be shown last - long after the Barnsley's, Sunderland's and Hull City matches went out. The reason, I'm told, is that the MOTD Editor is a Spurs fan. Might be more appropriate to have a follower of football in charge, but who I am to criticise? Nowadays of course things are different. By the time MOTD stumbles on the air on a Saturday night, with its tired format and jaded on screen line-up, the football watching public have spent the day streaming their matches on the internet, and selecting extended highlights on Sky Sports of their team's game. Soccer First airs a half an hour before MOTD on both the Saturday night and the following morning, neatly capturing the audience.

It's your choice. Either stay up to the small hours in the hope of seeing a snatch of your game, or hit the red button on Sky and see the lot. I know what I do.

Bring it back! ITV is awful!

[Bulldog7 · 11 March 2002]

This was the best football show ever! ITV's attempt with 'The Premiership' has fallen way short. You can't beat Des but Gary was the perfect replacement. This programme managed to make 0-0 draws interesting! BBC please buy the highlight rights back and show us this wonderful piece of history again!