There are comments on the Graeme Souness thread regarding things that commentators can and can't say, which leads me to wonder why we need them at all. In the early days of radio, silent football matches never really caught on and then some jolly clever chappie at the BBC came up with the idea of placing a microphone under the nose of a Cambridge educated ex-rugger player with a BBC voice called Lt Col Henry Blythe Thornhill Wakelam and told him to commentate on the proceedings. This he must have done admirably as it was deemed that sport on radio, quite rightly, needed commentary.
When TV arrived new mouthpieces arrived but at least the early ones limited the chat to who had the ball and who it was passed to. Not like today's mob with their unwanted facts and opinions who don't stop rabbitting. But now we are not limited to one pest, we are regaled with two, the pundit who analyses everything and tells us what we have just watched. If we see Eze make a superb pass to Zaha and he scores, why do we need someone to tell us Eze has made a superb pass to Zaha and he has scored?
The fact is once we know who's playing we do not need the commentary team and their non stop yacking, we don't have them at the ground, in fact if they were sitting behind you with their incessant chatter you'd be compelled to tell them to shut up.
And it's not just football, but boxing, snooker, tennis, who needs 'em? And so I'm thinking of starting a campaign against commentators and analysts. CACA. Sounds about right.

People like play by play and then a color commentator as they used to be known.

Which is good balance but now they are both a** kissers to big teams and other players.

You will always get some biased but I see it as have 3 one for each team and neutral that just calls the game (this wont happen the same as this is how it should be in studio)

It's entertainment people dont want no emotion play by play when watching on tv otherwise they would stick to radio which some still do this.

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Watch the match on telly, listen on 5live(etc) soooo much better.

I'm a blind man, i'm a blind man, now my room is cold,
When a blind man cries, Lord, he feels it from his soul.
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Wonderful.
Gracias !

Me too, but one can hardly say JP was impartial back then. He loved the Palace!

Palace since 19 August 1972. Palace 1 (Tony Taylor) Liverpool 1 (Emlyn Hughes)

Yep, that's right. He was brilliant then and as YT said he had a soft spot for Palace. Still does I fancy.

Unfortunately he's much more restrained these days on the telly. But still one of the best commentators who doesn't need support from an 'expert'.

Dad and I watched games standing on the muddy slope of the Holmesdale Road end. He cheered and I rattled.