The weekend has arrived and it is time for another slice of our favourite football highlights show; Match of the Day. Last week, Gary Lineker displayed his phenomenal and extensive vocabulary as he took the crown of best presenter. Who will it be this week? Let’s find out.
Joining the Walkers man this week is Alan Shearer and Arsenal legend Martin Keown, who I met once at a street party in Oxford. At least I think it was him. He looked very startled when I said ‘Nice to meet you, Martin. I’m a big fan.’
Lineker sets the rules early saying that he doesn’t want any feet on the desk from either Keown or Shearer. I wonder where Hansen is this week? Most likely on his sixteenth holiday this year. I’ve read how much these BBC lot get paid. Tsk.
Before Lineker and the team get started there is a nice little moment for the Remembrance Sunday tributes as we are shown that a minutes sileced was observed at all the grounds prior to kick off.
Kicking off (heh) the highlights is Aston Villa vs Manchester United, a game in which for the 726th time United were able to come from behind to win. Javier Hernandez proved to be the difference but there is no way they can give the Sigourney Weaver lookalike the hat-trick. Lineker calls it a ‘stunning’ game of football and rolls out an impressive stat on United’s knack of coming from behind.
Shearer and Keown share the analysis and Shearer says that Sigourney coming on at half time was the game changer. Keown calls him a modern day Solskjaer. High praise, that. All are in agreement that Villa performed well despite having lots of young players in the team choosing to highlight the power of BENTEKE has a plus point.
Forgot to weigh in on the shirts of the presenters for this MotD. Nothing spectacular if truth be told. It looks like Shearer has an endless wardrobe of pink shirts. Keown and Lineker keep it bland and the more I look at Lineker’s shirt the more ugly it becomes. Tut tut, Gary.
The next game is the bonkers 3-3 draw between Arsenal and Fulham. Martin Jol’s voice is brilliant. How many fags has he smoked to get it sounding like that? Keown on the analysis for this one and combines criticism of the Arsenal back four with praise for Dimitar Berbatov. He then inexplicably mispronounces Mertesacker’s and Sagna’s names. Wtf? Shearer cracks the first joke by saying that defending like that would never happen with Keown and Adams. Suck up. It looks like Keown takes a great deal of time and care to maintain his beard.
Next up we have Everton vs Sunderland as the Toffees continued their impressive start to the season by winning 2-1. The other big news from this game, someone other than Steven Fletcher scored for Sunderland and Marouanne Fellani, the man with the Biggest Hair Ever has had a hair cut! Woah. None of the team point this out. Amateur stuff.
Wigan vs West Brom next up as West Brom won 2-1 and our proving to be the surprise team in the Premier League this season. Keown is impressed by West Brom and the fact that they were still able to win even though they left out Peter Odemwinge who had scored two goals against Southampton in their previous game.
The attention turns to Stoke vs QPR and Stoke’s victory meant QPR are still looking for their first league win of the season. Ouch, Mark Hughes, ouch. Shearer says that QPR must take the positives out of the game but says if they don’t win against Southampton at home next week then….well, he just shakes his head which says it all really.
The penultimate game this weekend is Southampton vs Swansea which ended in a 1-1 draw. Southampton, despite being 1-0 up were unable to keep Swansea out, something which Keown laments as ‘unbelivable’. The problem with Southampton is not scoring goals but keeping them out. They just can’t defend and it will cost them dearly throughout the season.
Final game time now and it’s a 0-0 draw between Reading vs Norwich where not a whole lot happened to be completely honest with you and Shearer and Keown can’t even be bothered with analysis, just saying a couple of words about this and that.
And so ends another edition of MotD and, unfortunately, Lineker did not consult his thesaurus this time round as there was no fantastic adjective to describe a particular performance. Disappointed. Keown did OK, I suppose, but let himself down with his mispronunciation. What was all that about? His best moment of punditry came when this happened, anyway.
So, I guess Shearer wins the crown of Best Pundit this week by default. I was expecting Lineker to follow up his brilliant performance last week with another top showing but it wasn’t to be. Just wear something other than a pink shirt next week eh Shearer? Maybe some Ralph.
Till next week.