Gary Neville wasn't too impressed with Chelsea's extra-time effort in the League Cup final Photo: Sky Sports
Peter Drury has an interesting take on the commentator's art and difficulties as he chatted with fellow Sky Sports reporter Dharmesh Sheth during the build-up to the main event of the League Cup final. Drury said it was “foolish” to write scripts or prepare lines because the inherently “chaotic” nature of a football game meant “you have to be sensitive to every situation.”
Therefore, it must be concluded that Peter's poetry, his rhetorical flowering, comes to him at this moment, born mysteriously but majestically on the zephyrs of spontaneous creativity, majestically and mysteriously wafting around the commentary box of Heaven. Either that, or he's too intoxicated by the smell of Jamie Redknapp's Elite Gentleman eau de toilette in his dressing room. Yesterday's included:
(at the beginning) “Rhapsody blue in thrilling dissonance with the red beat of Mercy.”
“And the ribbons are red, Jurgen's first brilliant decoration Farewell to Klopp.”
“Klopp’s kids, Kop’s kids did it.”
(Seeing the trophy before presentation) “Golden sky, sweet silver song of the lark.”
An intoxicating thing that is best consumed with caution and, I must say, not to everyone’s taste. And yet, for all Drury's lyrical ambitions, the best line of the day came not from him but from Gary Neville, who said: “Klopp's kids against the billion pound blue bottles”, a poignant and funny construction or deconstruction, and further evidence that mic analyst and hand grenade commentator, there is no one better than Gurre. When he uses his considerable gifts of insight, intelligence and conflict-proneness as a football pundit, he remains essential viewing. Let's hope that, although no one can predict it with certainty, he appears to have made the decision to move somewhat away from the days of his four-quadrant all-out media blitz, his position as a one-man opinion factory and self-fulfilling media hub.< /p>
In his own words, he was “not in the media, but a person who distributed content” and for several years – perhaps in part because he had too much free time during Covid – how did he distribute this content . . Spray around. For a while there, it was impossible to turn on the television or open a newspaper, let alone the Internet, without reading Red Nev firing a volley at this or raising batons against it, and very often his amateur skates were only tangentially associated with football. Government, the opposition, the environment, club ownership, media deals, labor relations, the nature of capitalism, whatever you call it, were all within his purview, and he was given, quite sensibly, limitless opportunities and platforms from which to tell your opinion. . It got too good.
What a long and strange journey it was for the boy from Bury. Who would have predicted, when he was playing as Sir Alex's representative on the ground, that this dogged defender, opposition baiter, Anybody But United poster boy for darts and general all-round irritant would become a media darling? Like Andy Gray before him, and Alan Hansen, Neville elevated and redefined the role of the former professional football analyst on “Monday Night Football” and in the spin-off commentary: telling the lay viewer what he didn't know in an insightful, opinionated and enlightening manner. . Sky clearly couldn't believe his luck and they got even luckier when Jamie Carragher turned out to be the perfect partner for him. But like many observant people with complete conviction in their own opinions, he lacked self-awareness, equal and opposite to communication skills. And this has led to a certain amount of absurdity regarding off-field issues, such as when he invented the concept of a “mini-retirement” or, as the rest of humanity calls it, a “holiday”. His attention seems to have turned back to football recently, which is great news for TV viewers but not so much for the Chelsea manager.
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