I despair of the standard of football punditry in Britain today. The Beeb and ITV have so much money to splash out on good, incisive, articulate pundits (Eamon Dunphy, for example) and yet we get clowns like Alan Shearer and Ian Wright. Even Alan Hansen, who used to be decent, is losing the plot. Last night, when asked by Gary Lineker how he’d resolve the Lampard/Gerrard midfield axis of evil, Hansen basically replied: ‘Just carry on playing them together…’ Shearer gave a similar answer when asked where Stevie G should play: ‘In the middle, with Lampard’ was the gist of his answer. Brilliant, why on earth didn’t I think of that? And we call Steve McClaren clueless.
Excuse me Alans – have you watched Lampard and Gerrard play together over the past few years? If this pair of ‘world-class players’ haven’t figured out how to do it by now, my guess is that they never will. Ever. Lampard did okay last night, because Michael Carrick allowed him to get forward, sniffing for glorious deflections in the box. But you know that as soon as Gerrard comes back, we’ll have the same old problem, all over again. Why can’t we learn from past mistakes? Why are all pundits blind to the fact that Lamps and Stevie can’t play together? Why didn’t Alan Hansen shave before last night’s game? Answers on a postcard please…