WHEN you think of some the evocative images of the English football, there’s no doubt the World Cup win of 1966, Liverpool and Manchester United’s famous European triumphs and the sight of unlikely champions such as Derby County, Nottingham Forest and Leicester City scooping the end-of-season silverware spring to mind.
So when the BBC’s new Premier League Show, which aired at the 10pm on Thursday evening, was set in the National Football Museum in Manchester, you could have hoped for a glimpse of some of those halcyon moments.
Instead we got Gabby Logan showing us exhibits such as a Spitting Image puppet of Eric Cantona, the ice cream man suits Liverpool’s spice boys wore before their ill-fated FA Cup final appearance in 1996 and a statue of Michael Jackson which Fulham’s former mad-cap owner Mohammed Al-Fayed plonked outside Craven Cottage just, because, you know.
Oh and then Ian Wright popped up. It was clear from the start that ‘Wrighty’ was there for the alleged comic relief and Gabby was the, er, straight man.
But before all that, it was time to see how Gary Lineker got on when he went to chat with Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp.
The chat at Liverpool’s training complex was filmed before the season started so Gary couldn’t quiz big Jurgen about whether Alberto Moreno had incriminating pictures of him or not.
Instead Jurgen wanted to show Gary his big map of Britain because he heard of lots of clubs, but didn’t know where they were – much like your average Premier League footballer.
He was of course asked about his wild displays of emotions on the sideline and admitted to often regretting them afterwards – or scundered if you like.
Speaking of vernacular (no that’s not Daniel Sturridge’s latest injury) some subtitles wouldn’t have gone amiss – those Scousers perched on wheelie bins to get a peak over the wall of ‘Kloppo’ training the Reds were a bit hard to make out.
Then it was back to the studio where Gabby and former Arsenal striker Wrighty would chew over some the big issues in the Premier League such as should Arsene Wenger still be manager of Arsenal, did Arsenal need to buy more players in the transfer window, how would Arsenal get on this season in the Premier League, were Arsenal well-equipped to deal with injuries and suspension. It was a great opportunity for Ian Wright to show his breadth of footballing knowledge.
Just to balance it out, we had Jermaine Jenas talking about other teams, well more specifically how it was okay to block and push people in the box.
He did this with some fancy interactive 3D graphics in which the former Spurs crock got to walk onto the pitch (a lot more often than he did in his playing days).
Clearly the BBC got their hands on the same software they used on ITV’s Knightmare all those years ago, minus the bearded dungeon master of course (more’s the pity).
