SOME advice for the BBC team choosing the new Match Of The Day presenter and their team.
Take a good look at Football Focus and then do the exact opposite.
I promise them, if they go in the polar opposite direction, the show won’t go far wrong.
For, on the face of it, both shows should be performing the same basic task.
They show some football highlights and then the host engages in some tactical analysis and light-hearted banter with two knowledgeable ex-pros.
It’s almost impossible to screw up, yet this is precisely what the BBC has achieved by allowing Football Focus to be captured by host Alex Scott and the cult of woke.
To the extent that football is no longer even the chief focus of the show.
Despite the title, it’s now a political propaganda exercise which would much rather tell you about Black History Month, a trans referee or Russell Martin’s veganism than look forward to the weekend’s games and back at the previous week’s goals.
Last Saturday, for instance, the Chelsea v Arsenal preview was left to an obscure Afro beats jazz group called the Ezra Collective and there were updates from the England women’s amputee team and the performance of England’s partially sighted futsal squad at the European championships, but not a word about the Scottish League Cup semi-finals.
And in case you think this is just the fringe carping of a bitter Tartan Army obsessive, it’s not.
Well, not entirely, because Alex and her woke agenda have crushed everything in their path, including the giants of the game and even ignored the 30th anniversary of Bobby Moore’s death last year, because they were too busy covering the Football v Homophobia awards and updating viewers on the mental health struggles of a random French female footballer, Wendie Renard.
Alex Scott, who’s rarely off her high horse, sees it as her divine mission, of course, to re-educate the herd and often punctuates her speeches with the phrase: “Football is for everyone.”
She doesn’t mean it, obviously.
Watch Football Focus with its new generation of tedious young female pundits who’ve all swallowed the coaching manual, and out-of-their-depth reporters like Love Island’s Jordan Mainoo-Hames, and you’ll quickly realise, as a middle-aged bloke, you’re the last person the BBC wants to watch the show
We’ve taken the hint as well and Football Focus viewing figures have fallen from 849,000, in 2019, to 564,000, by 2023.
Alex Scott’s over-entitled reaction to this “go woke go broke” disaster is perhaps telling.
Rather than realise the viewers have a point and change the show accordingly, she has threatened to quit hosting Football Focus and move to America due to a perceived lack of support from management.
The BBC should use her threat as guidance during their MOTD recruitment process and as an opportunity to pull its sport content back from the brink of total destruction.
If Mark Chapman and Gabby Logan both want to replace Gary Lineker, choose the better candidate.
And if Alex Scott threatens to quit and go to America if she doesn’t get it, drive her to the airport.
