Kevin Keegan

Some good points there mate, you will probably get hammered on here for saying so though.......in any other walk of life you usually need the relevant experience when applying for certain jobs.......i.e. I am an electrician and have experience in certain electrical fields and would only get a job in one of the relevant fields......however there is not a female pundit out there with relevant experience of playing top level men’s football.....unless I am missing something that is, so I can imagine some ex-championship footballers (I.e. Jobi McAnuff who is excellent btw) could have a case of feeling agreived that some female pundits have jumped the queue so to speak........but it is what it is a suppose.......got to agree such as Laura Woods and Gabby Yorath are top notch as mentioned in other posts, but they are mainly presenters as opposed to pundits

 

You've highlighted a lot of reasons why I gave up on watching football on TV. Pundits are not employed on how skilled they are at punditry, but on how good they were in their former career when they were footballers. I don't believe there is any correlation between being good at football and good at talking about football. I don't think you even have to have played the game in order to provide analysis on it and express that in intelligent/ articulate/ insightful/ humerous way. But it's only top level (used to be just men, now also women) ex-players who are given such roles and as such it is, imho, a poor product with the only change since the 70s the gender of some of those employed. It all seems so dated.

 

I think Carragher is quite insightful but it really annoys me the way he is unable to finish one point before going off on another. I love Clare Balding for the Olympics but for the tennis I really miss She Barker. We know Joey Barton' s opinion of women,so no surprises there. Kevin Keegan just seems to contradict himself from what I've read!

 

Of course it has something to do with gender. Why do they only ever have one female pundit at a men’s game? Why for instance do they never have an all female punditry team? They don’t because they want people to keep watching & the majority don’t want to watch female ex-players they’ve barely heard of analyse a game over Keane, Carragher, Neville, Richards etc. It’s the football equivalent of manufactured pop groups in the 90’s / 00’s when almost every group would have one non-white member. It is what it is it doesn’t particularly bother me but it’s pretty obvious most are getting punditry gigs as a box ticking exercise.

 

Agree with that, she is excellent. Fit as fook too

 

Completely agree. They want views & people like Keane & Souness been controversial, Richards making jokes, Carragher & Neville arguing etc.

Then they want a woman on there with them.

But actual top pundits? No they aren’t bothered. Entertain & tick boxes that’s what it’s about.

 

That’s exactly who I was thinking of! McAnuff is brilliant but he’s never going to a World Cup with the BBC, ITV or covering super Sunday.

Laura Woods is superb. Knowledgeable of many different sports as well. She was excellent on talksport & doing the boxing.

 

Absolutely awful. How he's got to be the main man on some channels is beyond me.

 

Where's the bloke love?

 

There really is a dearth of good pundits and commentators these days. McCoist is the absolute best co-comms, Richards is entertaining in the studio, Laura Woods is by far the best presenter, and Gabby Y is very good too.

After that (although I'm sure there's some I'm forgetting) it's a huge bag of meh.

Agree with the above that Jobi Mcanuff has been decent when I've seen him.

I've also seen Nedum Onuoha do a few little bits, and he comes across great, wonder why he's not involved more.

 

Laura woods she can hold my mike anytime she wants.

 

I was referring to people complaining about their favourite pundits being replaced. It's happened since long before there were any female pundits and people have always complained when a favourite is replaced. Before social media it was in the pubs. The fact that it involves women has sadly just brought out sexism..

For some reason aging white men feel the need to express negativity when opportunities are afforded to none white nen.whether he means it maliciously or not, that's exactly what Keegan did.

It's not that there aren't box ticking exercises going on. It's just that what you're doing is a part of the problem. You're expressing hearsay that the old way is better because you know what the majority do or don't want to see.

I work as a data analyst and you learn quickly in this field that hearsay and anecdotal evidence are extremely deceptive. Pissed off people speak far louder and with more conviction than the actual trend. Do you really believe to that with the amount of data the TV industry collect that it isn't analysing the trends in minute detail and making decisions based on that? You don't agree that's fine but your opinion is not everyone's truth.

 

Yeah, agree ref Keegan.
What I read he actually says some of the Women are better pundits than the men but he doesn’t like them doing it for England games.
I got the impression he was saying there was no comparison between playing for England as a Woman to the Men’s England games due to increased pressure/focus on the men’s game.

 

Pundits all talk crap anyway don’t see what anyone’s gender has to do with it. I think there’s argument to be made that Monday night football has lost something but I don’t think its in any way to do with the fact they have a female pundit. it’s just always better when Neville and Carragher are arguing

 

Yeah but when I say I have a crafty w@nk whilst thinking about them I'm a middle aged, misogynistic sex pervert.

 

No, I’m not expressing hearsay that the old way is better. I’m just expressing what I believe is happening.

They definitely make decisions on data. People like Micah Richards had a quick rise to the top in punditry because he went viral a lot. They paired him up with Roy Keane quite a lot at first on super Sunday as they made a really popular double act.

I imagine Daniel Sturridge will appear a lot as he was trending on his debut too.

I just don’t buy that many of these female pundits are that popular. I could be wrong but I genuinely believe they put one amongst the other pundits on many games so that they look like their doing some kind of good for the woman’s game rather than because they think they’re the best person for the job or that they’re extremely popular.

 

Keegan can say what he likes and he may have a point about women who have never played at the highest level. He might. But, he adds fire to the misogynistic nobheads argument. He also fails to appreciate by default that people who have never done a job can make perfectly reasonable comments about a job regardless of having never done it. I have never been pregnant but I have views about it.....
On balance its gender crap.

 

Football tactics are perfectly capable of being mastered by people who have played in the Conference League and below. To suggest that you can't comment on international football if you haven't played it is codswallop unless you're limiting your criteria to pretty much only the possible extra pressure that goes with competing at that level. In that case maybe a panel of psychologists may be more suitable.
I have some reservations about positive discrimination in really important jobs. You can hardly do it with brain surgeons but football analysts? Come on!