Blunt Insight

It's been said by many before, including me, the standard of football pundits on the country's national broadcaster is absolute crap.

What's irked me this time is BBC favourite Mark Lawrenson. On Football Focus on Saturday lunchtime, he states 18-year-old Arsenal player Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain should be in England's squad for this summer's European Championships as you should take the form players. A fair enough stance.

However, fast forward a few hours to that night's Match of the Day and after we watch the Norwich City vs Everton clash, Gary Lineker asks young Mark about Norwich's striker Grant Holt, who is the second top scoring English player this season. He's a player who, despite being 30 and in his first season of top-flight football, is enjoying a good spell of form. Gary wonders whether Grant could make the Euros in a few months?

"No" is the empathetic answer. Try to work that one out, though the cynic in me would suggest that if Holt played for Lawrenson's beloved Liverpool - perhaps in place of Andy "Mr £30 million" Carroll - he'd be singing a different song.

But this is the quality of football punditry on the BBC these days. Alan Shearer may well have been one of the best strikers around in his 1990s heyday, but his TV work puts him on par with the guy from the Monty Python sketch who can only answer "I hit the ball, and it was in the back of the net!" to every question. Infamously, at the last World Cup, he admitted before (I think) the Algeria vs Slovenia game that he had no idea about any of the players.

Since then, he hasn't learned much and the most we tend to get from him is "from there, he really should be scoring" when someone - perhaps Andy "Mr £30 million" Carroll - misses a sitter from a yard out. Well, thanks, Alan, I never would have come to that conclusion myself. You're justifying the license fee all by yourself, there.

Now, despite the evils of Sky, you have to give them some due for how they approach things. Sure, they have Jamie "Literally" Redknapp on the books, but at least there's Graeme Souness sitting next to him with a look of total contempt etched across his Begbie-esque features.

Also, since this season, they've brought Gary Neville into the fold. Never the most popular player outside Manchester United fans (and he wasn't all that with a lot of us, either), he's taken to the role like a natural, helping the company after they had to bin those two dinosaurs Grey and Keys. While those two (and Lawrenson and Alan Hansen on BBC) were from a different era of football, Neville is only just retired and brings that insight into his work. Weirdly, even fans who despised the guy as a player have been impressed by his honesty, directness and punditry work.

ITV seem to have taken this cue and brought in Nev's former captain Roy Keane to add a bit of directness to their coverage to counter the personality vortex of Gareth Southgate. Like Neville, he's not scared of putting the boot into United when they deserve it - contrast with Alan Hansen saying he'll back Kenny Dalglish to the hilt, when it's clear to the rest of the world that Liverpool are sinking fast.

The BBC need to sort their football footage out - fast. As an anchor, Gary Lineker has the charisma of a breezeblock and their whole approach is far too cosy. If management were brave, they'd attempt to bring in some new blood before it all descends into the realms of parody last seen with Ron Manager on The Fast Show.

Oh, and for the record, I reckon Grant Holt should go the Euros, but probably only because he's a Cumbrian lad. Get Scott Carson in there too and it'll be a fine summer for the homeland.