Football Food For Thought / Dan Fitch / 25 August 2009 /

Dan 'The Betting Man' Fitch has finally stayed awake long enough to witness The Football League Show on BBC1 and finds it to be a show of two halves.

Normally a mixture of too much alcohol and the droning tones of Alan Shearer make me pass out during Match Of The Day, but this week I somehow managed to remain conscious and watch The Football League Show.

As the title suggests, The Football League Show is a weekly round up of highlights and goals from the Football League. Perhaps Match Of The Day might think about being equally literal and re-branding itself as Several Matches Of The Day.

The debut of the show received a lot of publicity, but for all the wrong reasons. Somehow, the highlights of a game involving Torquay were interrupted with footage from the film Blue Crush, which was showing on ITV1.

The worse thing about the interruption was that it came at the exact point when Kate Bosworth was pulling down her knickers to sit on the khazi. It was the sort of moment that tabloid headline writers dream about.

I'm sad to say that nothing similar occurred during the show on Saturday. It might have livened things up somewhat.

Master of ceremonies is the competent but unexciting Manish Bhasin, who you might know as the presenter of Football Focus when the bloke from CBBC isn't doing it.

Alongside him is the equally competent but unexciting Steve Claridge. It's strange that considering Claridge was something of a maverick, both on and off the field during his playing career, that he becomes rather bland and Steve Ryder-esque when faced with a television camera.

Still, as a summariser Claridge is at least knowledgeable, which is more than could be said for Kevin Keegan, who I saw bluffing his way through the live coverage on ESPN on Sunday.

The producers have eschewed the comfy sofas of Match Of The Day and have instead created a set that looks like a cross between the sets of Saw and Crimewatch.

Bhasin sits at a desk with Claridge, with their voices echoing off the exposed brickwork. Just when you think that the show couldn't be less cosy, Manish hands over to Jacqui Oatley and the camera swoops round several corners, before finding her standing around with a clipboard like Denis Norden.

Oatley's job is to read out emails from viewers. Quite why it is necessary for her to do this in a completely different room to Bhasin and Claridge is a mystery, especially when that room contains loads of people tapping away on PCs, pretending that they're unaware of being on telly.

The email section is the least necessary aspect of the show. It's the BBC, so obviously nothing remotely controversial or interesting is going to be read out. Even less explainable than the decision to include this feature on a football highlights show, is the motivation of grown men to send emails in on a Saturday night, when they could be out getting drunk or watching porn.

When it comes to the actual football though, the Beeb is spot on, with selected highlights from several games and all the other goals being shown.

The highlights included Norwich's 5-2 win over Wycombe. Whilst they have done well to bounce back after their opening 7-1 defeat to Colchester, I think that the [3.65] for Norwich to be promoted this season represents poor value, unless Paul Lambert can sort out their defence.

In the Championship there was much talk of the poor starts made by QPR, Nottingham Forest and Ipswich. Forest look the value to be sucked into relegation at [8.4] having struggled last season, with Ipswich at [8.0] and QPR at [7.0].

At the other end of the table it looks as if the relegated trio of Newcastle at [2.86], Middlesbrough at [2.62] and West Brom at [2.6] are good bets for promotion, although it will be interesting to see how well they cope if they lose key players before the transfer window closes.

Ultimately The Football League Show is a decent effort, which is slightly spoilt by the vain attempts to be trendy. Just dump the décor, delete any emails from boring blokes wanting their names read out on TV and get someone slightly irreverent in alongside Claridge.

It is at least a lot better than ITV's effort. 'The Championship' didn't even feature a studio. Instead, Matt Smith would be filmed snooping around empty football grounds, whilst the actual match highlights often looked like they were being filmed on a CCTV camera.

Though the BBC's football coverage isn't perfect, at least you're not watching ITV.

Except for the Kate Bosworth cameos.

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