AFTER a BBQ on Wednesday and a KFC on Thursday, Friday’s menu was all about FNF.
For the uninitiated, FNF stands for Friday Night Football, an apparently new invention from Sky Sports which sees Premier League football played on a Friday night, in case you hadn’t guessed.
There are two problems with the branding of this ‘fresh’ concept.
Firstly, matches on a Friday evening are not a new thing, with Adnan Januzaj scoring an early-season winner for Manchester United at Aston Villa last term, while John O’Shea was man of the match in a 2-2 draw with Chelsea way back in the day when tins of Harp were a staple at the start of any weekend.
The second problem is that Sky’s marathon coverage doesn’t start on Friday night, but rather about lunchtime, with plenty of filler and very little killer employed to pass the time.
The first offering of FNF saw Man United host Southampton at Old Trafford and Jeff Stelling (right) host a shedload of people in a studio with more fancy tables than a mortuary in the Hollywood hills.
And while there was a match going on, the emphasis was firmly on the banter, because we all know Fridays are about having a laugh with the lads, although the tins of Harp were kept behind the orange sofa that nestled under the buttocks of Sky regulars Thierry Henry, Jamie Carragher and Jamie Redknapp, as well as special guest and Ryan Giggs and Stelling’s co-host and former Countdown team-mate Rachel Riley.
The latter has clearly been brought in to add a bit of ‘intellect’ to proceedings which was badly needed on this occasion, with Giggs in particular living up to the thick footballer stereotype.
“Can United win the league?” Redknapp asked at one stage while hunched over some touchscreen contraption.
“I fink they can, but it’s going to be a war of nutrition,” said the wing wizard.
Carragher was clearly thinking of food as well, pointing out that he hadn’t eaten since “I had a Pret-A-Manger at half 12”.
I was expecting pizzas to be delivered to the studio to maintain the ‘lads night in’ theme but there were more important matters to attend to.
The first was getting over to Chris Kamara, who was manically reinventing the pitchside reporter role, running around like a cross between Lionel Ritchie and Anneka Rice before jumping on Southampton stopper Fraser Forster after his warm-up.
“You’re in for a tough night,” warned Kamara to Forster, whose stunned look couldn’t even have been sorted out with a botox injection from your one Leah from The Apprentice that he has been romantically linked to.
All the while, there was a countdown clock (to make Rachel feel at home) in the corner of the screen, not to kick-off but to the announcement of the teams by Geoff Shreeves.
“Paul Pogba starts,” exclaimed the less than jazzy Geoff.
That news met with little reaction from the studio analysts, who still had their noses in the Dominos menu.
After an Henry interview with Pogba (what’s French for bromance?), Riley revealed she used to have a Giggsy poster above her bed, which raised a few eyebrows, but not from the man himself, who mysteriously has none to raise.
After six weeks of build-up, it was time for the game itself, and Pogba had clearly got the memo about Friday night being ‘bantz’ night as he flicked, spinned and showboated his way through 90 minutes.
Yet it was Zlatan Ibrahimovic who did the damage as United sauntered to a 2-0 win.
After another bit of light-hearted ‘bant-alysis’, all that was left was for Stelling to sign off in style.
“Zlatan calls himself a Ferrari, and it’s fair to say he’s really motoring. He enjoyed Friday night football and I hope you did to.”
It still needs a bit of work in the garage to be honest Jeff, preferrably one with a Pirelli calendar on the wall. That’s what lads like after all.
