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Paulie B's avatar

I love listening to Ally, but do think when he's with Fletch and Rio, it brings out the absolute worst in his commentary. He seems to try to appear to be a vibes man as one of the lads, and yesterday looked silly when the O'Brien offside was given as clear, he was focused on the wrong things. I'm not a fan of Rio, he's a man who adds 100s of words without really saying anything. As Barry Davies said once - the key is knowing when not to speak. Fletch I find an irritant and am staggered he's been able to have a decade+ long career with BT/TNT without being that engaging. I do think TNT has awful coverage for the most part, but it has gotten a lot worse recently with the 3 man booth.

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David O'Leary's avatar

Absolute agreement here. That Fletcher hasn’t improved in a decade (compare with the likes of Steve Bower, Bill Leslie…) and that TNT persist with such coverage suggests they really aren’t giving their team the feedback they should.

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David O'Leary's avatar

It was an assault on the ears: Fletcher with his machine-gun rhythm of statistics; Ally sadly suffering from overexposure and poor pairings; Ferdinand incoherent and incomprehensible.

Fletcher, prone to rambling goal calls, tried at least to let THE moment breathe, and seemed to stop Ally speaking - only for Rio to pipe up with his OMGs and to tell us ‘Listen to the noise’. We’d have loved to, Rio. We’d have loved to.

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Uncle Leo's avatar

"Guest starring Noel Gallagher" was the moment TNT 'jumped the shark'. Thank God that night the scoreboard disagreed with the very obvious bias on the gantry, making the noise slightly less unbearable.

The entire broadcast experience seems very American over the last few seasons (heavily obsessed by stats, pundits firing out soundbites they hope will be turned into memes, cross promoting this week's awful crime based dramas on their sister channel).

I'm not entirely against The xG Brigade but if there was a permanent red button option where you could watch the match with radio commentary I'd grab it with both hands.

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Anthony Purple Patch's avatar

To change a light bulb

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James Robson McKerchar's avatar

Great read. There’s a similarity on radio. Years ago we had one DJ playing music …now’s there’s 3 or more cohorts chipping in …to me it dilutes the experience. Really enjoying these posts tho Clive . 👍👏👏

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