I may be on my own here but has anyone else noticed the growing on-air tension between Radio 5Live's football/sports 'Anchor', Mark 'Chappers' Chapman and the Chief Football reporter/commentator, Ian Dennis?

Whenever they are on-air together, Chapman seems to go out of his way to wind up Dennis. This isn't banter as Dennis is clearly annoyed. Tonight, an exchange ended:

Chapman '...I asked from concern for you mate'

Dennis (sounding very unhappy) 'yeah, right'

It's heading for a fight imo. I'm backing Dennis to flip and give Chappers a slapping :-)

Edited February 10, 201412 yr by Spudulike

I may be on my own here but has anyone else noticed the growing on-air tension between Radio 5Live's football/sports 'Anchor', Mark 'Chappers' Chapman and the Chief Football reporter/commentator, Ian Dennis?

Whenever they are on-air together, Chapman seems to go out of his way to wind up Dennis. This isn't banter as Dennis is clearly annoyed. Tonight, an exchange ended:

Chapman '...I asked from concern for you mate'

Dennis (sounding very unhappy) 'yeah, right'

It's heading for a fight imo. I'm backing Dennis to flip and give Chappers a slapping :-)

Anything that brings back Colin Murray to MOTD 2 gets my support. Murray was what being a football is about: relaxed, fun and self deprecating. Chapman is the problem with football: media trained, incessantly dry and has never kicked a ball in his life. 

^ Murray was a loss to the BBC - I got the impression that he was seen by them as a loose cannon. He was good on MOTD2 in my view; he was enthusiastic and non-corporate. I read that Hansen and Co found Murray too opinionated but that's a poor reason to axe him. He knew his football too.

I can't say i have noticed the tension, it's not something i listen for. I will have to have a listen soon, it would be great to hear an argument on there

 

I also agree about Colin Murray, i was annoyed when i heard he was axed from MOTD2, i thought he made it very enjoyable. It was probably Gary Lineker complaining because his show is a complete bore and too serious whereas MOTD2 is fun and light hearted.

Got to disagree with you guys. While I didn't really mind Murray, I never really thought of him as being particularly good or valuable to the show.

 

I really like Chappers, he's obviously a good presenter and he has little digs at Savage and Lawrenson on a regular basis, which is great. The whole set-up just seems a bit more professional to me now and flows very smoothly.

 

For me though, the problem has never been the presenter. It's the consistently boring, dreary, lazy, uninformative pundits. The lack of proper analysis on there is mind boggling. The only ones who ever appear to offer any form of insight are Nevin and Keown. 

 

The likes of Alan Shearer and Alan Hansen don't seem to understand the difference between 'analysing' and 'describing'. Yes Alan, we can see how players are in the box. We can count too.

Fair enough Adam, we all have our views.

I completely am on board with what you said about the pundits though. They do desribe and don't analyse and what makes it worse is that a lot of them take themselves too seriously. The best two pundits in my view are Nevin and Neville as they analyse and don't take themselves too seriously and more importantly they are receptive of their surroundings and the wider context of the world.

Shearer, Lawrenson and Hansen are the dross of the dross, describe and take themselves too seriously. Whilst, Savage adds nothing in terms of punditry at least he is able to laugh at himself. Keown isn't but is pretty good at analysing the games.

But for all the problems the BBC have, at least they are not nearly as bad as ITV. You know your coverage is bad when Roy Keane is your saviour.

Edited February 11, 201412 yr by mactheknife

Fair enough Adam, we all have our views.

I completely am on board with what you said about the pundits though. They do desribe and don't analyse and what makes it worse is that a lot of them take themselves too seriously. The best two pundits in my view are Nevin and Neville as they analyse and don't take themselves too seriously and more importantly they are receptive of their surroundings and the wider context of the world.

Shearer, Lawrenson and Hansen are the dross of the dross, describe and take themselves too seriously. Whilst, Savage adds nothing in terms of punditry at least he is able to laugh at himself. Keown isn't but is pretty good at analysing the games.

But for all the problems the BBC have, at least they are not nearly as bad as ITV. You know your coverage is bad when Roy Keane is your saviour.

 

 

To be fair the pundits on ITV haven't got a chance when their presented by Chiles.

Totally agree re. Chiles. Cringeworthy as he's constantly trying banter and failing.

Re. Savage: he's honest and not many pundits are. He seems incapable of trotting out the platitudes that seem mandatory for pundits. He wasn't a top class player but he is much more interesting rhan many who were, imo.

^ Murray was a loss to the BBC - I got the impression that he was seen by them as a loose cannon. He was good on MOTD2 in my view; he was enthusiastic and non-corporate. I read that Hansen and Co found Murray too opinionated but that's a poor reason to axe him. He knew his football too.

 

Me and a couple of uni  mates met Murray at a pub in London over the summer and he was a top bloke. Bought us all a pint and we told him we want him back on the beeb over the turd Alan Hansen