Shades of gray mark first sign of new season

The start of the new football season and Andy Gray is released from whatever secure institution he’s been housed in while the World Cup went on around him.

Andy is to analysis what binoculars are to Stevie Wonder – he may have played football at the highest level for Everton, Wolves and Aston Villa but he has the cutting edge of a white feather when it comes to adding insight to proceedings.

Best you’ll get from him is “one goal could decide this one” or “this is a game you’d pay good money to see” – he spends most of the 90 minutes just getting in the way of his fellow commentator in the same way he used to get in the face of opposing defenders from corners.And now that they’ve given him another flash new machine to tinker with, there’s no stopping the man when it comes to hackneyed analysis – the pity is that Sky Sports wasn’t honest enough to admit that the gimmicks are merely designed to detract from the reality that Andy knows nothing that the average ten year old couldn’t tell you for free.

Still, if you want to watch football on the small screen, you have to have Sky Sports, the station that has a camera for every fan in the crowd so that you can view proceedings from any angle you could ever wish for.

ESPN is lumbering along behind with Ray Stubbs giving it an air of authority that it scarcely deserves; they also take your money under false pretences because they claim they show the Europa League but forget to point out that this offer doesn’t apply in Ireland.So you have a blue screen for two hours of a Thursday night while our friends across the water enjoy whatever the poor relation of European club football throws up for fun.

For more, read this week's Connacht Sentinel.