Squad Numbers

Football media and punditry is generally excellent. When you combine some of the most famous names from the sports past casting their views and the new breed of in depth statistical analysis, you get an exciting, enlightening insight into the depth of what we see on our screens every week. However, sometimes it feels as if this insight becomes stale and repetitive, especially when it comes to the “smaller clubs”, where often it can feel like some ex players don’t actually put much if any thought into their analysis of said club and just regurgitate the typical thing to say about said team.

As a fan of a “smaller club” myself (Crystal Palace), I know how frustrating it can be when no-one seemingly has anything interesting to say about your club. Palace, for my time supporting them, have often featured very late on Match Of The Day, in “meaningless” mid table dull draws, so get very little analysis time, but for many of those years it seemed as if they’d always say the same thing “Can Palace cope without Zaha?”, or something along that sentiment. That’s the frustrating thing, the media tend to slightly rephrase the same thing over and over, so it never feels like you ever get anything new. Honestly, I’m pretty sure I’ve developed some kind of trauma from seeing the same graph of Palace’s win rate with and without Zaha.

The problem for these pundits is that the narrative moves on, times change. When Zaha left Palace in the summer of 2023, suddenly their go to line on Palace had evaporated, and pundits needed to look for a a new one. Luckily, that presented itself very quickly, in the form of Ebere Eze and Michael Olise, who took over from Zaha as the diamonds in the rough that Palace could not live without. The entirety of the 23/24 season was spent watching on as all people would say was that Palace needed to get Eze and Olise fit and together. It’s an unimaginative narrative as well, because of course without your best two players makes you worse, it’s obvious, it’s not analysis it’s fact.

At the time of this narrative being at it’s strongest, Palace were struggling, the fans were unhappy with the direction of the club and the decision to re appoint Roy Hodgson as manager on a permanent basis, reflected in his lack of faith in youngsters during one of the worst injury crisis in the clubs history. Instead of focussing on these things though, it seemed as if all the media would do was defend Hodgson for the clubs poor form, as he was unable to call on Eze and Olise, despite the ironic truth being that Hodgson’s recovery management being predominantly to blame for their recurring injuries.

If you listen out for it, you can find these repeating narratives for every “smaller club”, and every fanbase involved must feel equivalent frustrations at the generic statements made about their club to that of me with my Palace hat on. For example, Brentford fans will have cringed at the constant questions of “Can Brentford cope without Toney?”, sound familiar? They will also have had to endure pundits not being able to go through a single conversation about their manager Thomas Frank without linking him to a bigger club. Meanwhile Southampton fans deal with the constant bashing of their positive, front footed style of play, because that’s not how promoted teams are “meant” to play.

I’m sure that a Brentford fan would much rather hear an analysis of the emergence of Mikel Daamsgaard this season, and a Southampton fan would much rather hear about how their style of play is actually keeping them in games, and giving them an opportunity to compete, than these unimaginative and frankly inaccurate regurgitated ideas which stick in the minds of the pundits who know they have to say something, but have nothing to say.

Now, I’m not saying that I have an in depth tactical, financial and general knowledge of every Premier League Club ready to go at any time off the top of my head (I do my best), I don’t think any normal fan does. I’ve probably watched a full game of Southampton and Brentford maybe 2 or 3 times this season, and seen them on Match Of The Day every weekend, that’s the extent of my knowledge of them, it’s nothing like the time and thought I put into supporting Palace. I’ve watched every televised Palace match this season, and tend to re-watch the full game of those 3PM Saturday kick off’s the next morning when it becomes available on Palace TV (the club’s subscription service). It’s not just that, I will spend all week thinking about everything to do with Palace in the build up to their games, consuming any content I can about Palace, whether that’s interviews, podcasts or training videos.

This is all perfectly fine, because I am a fan, I watch these games, I talk about these games and I write about these games because I love it.

The difference with pundits comes as it is their job. They are employed to provide an insight for the viewers. Sometimes, it feels as if pundits are hired for entertainment purposes, or just because they are a big name who will attract viewers no matter what they say. That’s not going to say that ex players shouldn’t be pundits, there are some excellent ex players turned pundits who provide great entertainment and insight, Jamie Carragher and his analysis on Sky Sports’ “Monday Night Football” is a great example of this, a big name, who puts a lot of thought into his work, and provides statistical and visual insights into varying topics.

However, as a fan, I do feel that in general across the industry, it would be a refreshing change if more thought could be given to the clubs that whilst they may not be “major” provide so much joy to so many of us.