SIDELINES

TV WATCH Review of the month on screen

Given their usual propensity for bombast, it’s surprising that Sky Sports haven’t made a little more of the fact that this season marks 25 years since the arrival of both the Premier League and their own dominance of the football broadcasting landscape. It’s also surprising that the new season has been marked by relatively few new, flashy gimmicks – save, perhaps, for the restructuring of their network with an entirely dedicated Sky Sports Premier League channel.

Sky kicked off the season with a second attempt at launching a Friday Night Football strand. Last season’s experiment was arguably one of the biggest failures in their quarter-century so far, and was quietly taken out the back and dispatched after just five matches of the originally slated ten. In reviving it, they’ve ditched the original format and opted for evolution of familiar concepts, with the Arsenal v Leicester game on August 11 seeing the popular Monday Night Football team of Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher taken outdoors for some BT Sportstyle pitchside presentation.

The extensive experience of new host Kelly Cates – not to mention her superior level of assurance in fronting the show – means she’s unlikely to suffer the same widespread disapproval on social media that drove Rachel Riley out of the job. But one new element that surely can’t last is the mobile version of their famous “Skypad”. While undoubtedly an impressive technological feat in the confines of a studio, attaching it to a glorified golf buggy and wheeling it out to the side of the Emirates pitch left the whole enterprise feeling more than a bit Channel 5.

All in all, it’s certainly a less aggressively annoying prospect than its previous incarnation, but there’s still little done to make live games on a Friday night feel like a particularly essential part of the schedule.

BRADFORD

TIM

There’s also been a change this year in the way Sky introduce the teams to the viewer at the start of each match. Gone are the longestablished green-screen “dynamic walk” clips – replaced by still images of players pulling an assortment of awkward static poses. Comparisons abounded on social media to X-Factor boy bands and the Trainspotting poster – but we look forward to seeing whether there are actually variant images for each player, or if Héctor Bellerín will be seen jocularly pretending to fasten up his collar every time Arsenal play.

BT Sport’s documentary Fabrice Muamba: A Life of Two Halves (August 16) saw the former Bolton player meeting with others whose careers were cut short unexpectedly – albeit in somewhat less dramatic circumstances than his own. Dean Ashton, Eddie Howe and

David Busst were among the subjects interviewed – with a common thread being that all have continued to work in and around football in some capacity since their playing days ended.

Indeed, it was notable that Howe actually stated that his managerial career would likely not have taken off so quickly if not for his injury at Portsmouth; while the natural sympathy one feels for the career Ashton could have had was dulled slightly by his wife saying that the biggest change with him being at home all day was that he suddenly had time to buy things off the internet.

In one of the film’s rarer dark moments, former Chelsea trainee Sam Hutchinson mentioned having suicidal thoughts after being forced to retire at the age of 21; but his story has actually had arguably the most upbeat ending, as he resumed his career a year later and is still playing for Sheffield Wednesday. Busst’s tale was perhaps the most affecting, due to the famously visceral nature of his injury; now working for former club Coventry, he was also able to play amateur football up to the age of 50, and showed a sanguine approach to his misfortune with a love of the game still very much apparent.

Although framed as the centre of the documentary, there was disappointingly little time given over to exploring Fabrice Muamba’s own attempts to deal with the end of his career – although it was touching to see him revisit Bolton’s training ground and reflect on how things have changed even in the short time since he retired. We learned that he’s seeking a coaching career and has successfully completed his UEFA “A” licence – but beyond this, he served as little more than an interviewer for the other subjects.

The film’s point was, perhaps, to show that there is indeed a fulfilling life to be had after an incomplete football career; but this turned out not to be an especially revelatory one, and some contrast in the stories, or deeper exploration of the psychology involved, may have made for a more interesting hour.

Seb Patrick

Modern times Football’s bid for world domination

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Daily Mail, August 2

efl.com, August 21

Philadephia Inquirer, August 9