If the US team get lost on the way to the World Cup...

...you'll know why...

Getting a decent presenter is Chiles Play for ITV

Adrian Chiles, it seems, has made his last appearance as presenter of Match of the Day 2. The BBC have today announced that Chiles will be moving to ITV to co-present GMTV and, of more significance to us, anchor the commercial channel’s World Cup coverage this year.

This is likely to bring about one of two distinctly different reactions in you: apathy bordering on abject relief, or contentment based on a secret admiration for the West Midlander.

Personally, I fall into the latter category. Chiles has an easy-going manner, very much that of the ordinary man on the street, approachable but knowledgeable and as comfortable discussing football as he is talking about knife crime or shopping habits on The One Show.

Some might say he’s a bit too ordinary and down-to-earth. Last week a feature in The Guardian suggested Chiles “never fails to give the impression of a Black Country labourer who has wandered into a television studio and doesn’t realise the camera is on.” Actually, is that such a bad thing? Sooner that than the clinical GQ magazine looks of Gary Lineker or the turgid shallowness of Richard Keys.

Speaking of looks, Adrian Chiles always seems to attract a little too much criticism where that’s concerned. Admittedly he’s no oil painting, but then again not many of us are, and those people that are oil paintings are probably having the piss taken out of them by the non-oil paintings anyway.

What can’t be disputed is the one thing that really sets Chiles apart from the vast majority of his peers – a genuine sense of humour. It’s this one aspect to his personality that particularly excites me about his move to ITV as he’s being installed as main anchor for their World Cup coverage ahead of Steve Rider, front man for the channel's Champions League coverage.

Rider, who turns 60 later this month, has never really exuded dynamism or a sparkling wit, and that’s just me using understated politeness. As professional as he undoubtedly must be, there’s something to be said for giving the viewer an appealing reason to watch its programmes and I think ITV will benefit for having Chiles on board. Unlike Rider, Chiles comes across as a genuine football fan who understands the game and can lighten the mood by dropping in the odd jocular aside here and there – just the sort of thing most footy fans will appreciate.

Quite who will replace Chiles on Match of the Day 2 remains to be seen, but our guess is that it'll be someone young with a two-dimensional personality and an awkward presenting style. Needless to say his absence will be all too noticeable for regular viewers of the programme.

So all that's left is to say 'well done ITV'. It seems you’ve finally made a wise choice for the job of presenting your World Cup coverage, and not before time. You’ve probably also ended up with someone who can bring some credibility to GMTV, but that was never going to be very difficult, was it?

Immitation is the greatest form of flattery...

We were avidly watching the BBC's coverage of the African Nation's Cup Final last night and a question suddenly came to mind...

...where did they get their idea for a set design from?

Taylor's reign revisited

Hey folks - here's a quick and very belated note to let you know that ITV is tonight showing once again the landmark Graham Taylor documentary An Impossible Job.

An Impossible Job was broadcast by Channel 4 in 1994 and followed Taylor’s reign as England manager during qualification for the 1994 World Cup through to his dismissal after failing to guide the team to the finals in the USA. The film is one of the most well-known and best remembered football documentaries of all time, but has not been repeated on television since it was first shown fourteen years ago - and the full-length 90-minute version has never been shown on British television.

ITV has also commissioned a new documentary in which Taylor examines one of the toughest jobs in world football, that of England manager. The documentary, produced and directed by Don Perretta and Carey Dunn, features Taylor in conversation with ex-England players, managers and figures from the international game such as Slaven Bilic and Johann Cruyff, as well as an interview with current England manager, Fabio Capello.

An Impossible Job will be shown tonight on ITV4 at 11pm and again on Tuesday 7 October while the new documentary appears on ITV1 on Wednesday 8 October. England’s first World Cup 2010 qualifier at Wembley will be live on ITV1 on Saturday 11 October.

How To Undermine An English Institution

Bewildered and dumbstruck - that's how I felt when watching 'Match of the Day' on Saturday night. There I was, getting my regular fix of all the action from that day's Premier League matches when Gary Lineker announced it was time for the August 'Goal of the Month' competition.

Now at this point I should inform those of you visiting our site from overseas that the BBC's 'Match of the Day' is an institution in its own right. A weekly programme showing highlights and goals from England's top flight, it's been running for 43 years and since 1970 has held a 'Goal of the Month' competition.

What would typically happen is that a selection of the best goals would be shown, each one assigned a letter of the alphabet ('Goal A', 'Goal B', etc). Viewers would then be asked to write their top three in descending order on the back of a postcard and send it off to the BBC. If your postcard matched the opinion of an unnamed panel of Match of the Day experts and it was pulled out of the hat before anyone else's, you'd win a prize.

It's a harmless bit of fun, but one which has become part of the ritual of watching 'Match of the Day' over the last 37 years… until now. On Saturday night, Gary Lineker informed the British public that because of the BBC's current suspension on audience participation competitions, 'Goal of the Month' would this time take on a different form.

Though a selection of goals from August's matches would be shown, the public would not be able to send in their votes by text message (as is now the case). Instead, Alan Hansen and Alan Shearer would go off and decide which one was the best before announcing the winner in a week's time. No public involvement, no nothing.

How very strange. Yes I know it wasn't the public that actually decided which goal was the best according to the number of votes cast. The public were only voting in the first place in the vague hope they'd be selected as the winner of a pair of tickets to a Premier League game of their choice, but that's not the point. By allowing us, the public, to take part, it enabled us all to get involved and make our feelings known that one particular goal was the one which should go on to be considered 'Goal of the Season' the following May.

Apparently, 'Match of the Day's loyal band of viewers were no longer important. We would no longer have the chance to enter the monthly competition even though it was the BBC's fault for not regulating its audience participation contests correctly in the first place.

I feel somehow let down and cheated. Whatever next? Lottery numbers being drawn when no-one's bought a ticket?

In defence of the Football fan...

OK, let's get this out of the way right now. Some time during the next four weeks - probably during the next two days in all probability - you will hear the following whining moan coming from certain sections of society:

"Every time you turn on the TV these days it's 'football, football, football'. I'm sick of it..."

Far be it for me to generalise, but more often than not it's women who utter the above statement. Not all women, of course, but quite a few. And what is their preferred choice of television programming? Soap operas. Some like to watch EastEnders, some like to watch Emmerdale and some like to watch Coronation Street. Oh and some poor souls like to watch all three, but they're beyond salvation, quite frankly.

So just how true is it - can it really be the case that Football is always on the telly, or at least more so than the soaps? In an attempt to clear the name of us Football fans, I've spent literally minutes trying to work out how much time is devoted to both the World Cup and to soap operas.

First of all, let's deal with the World Cup. It happens every four years, and as ever, the bulk of the matches are being shown live on ITV1 and BBC1. According to my calculations, the total amount of time that both channels will spend showing live matches is somewhere in the region of 140 hours.

And now, let's pick one of the three main soaps at random. Let's see... ummm... how about EastEnders. It's on four times a week for half an hour at a time, so that makes 2 hours per week. Or to put it another way, 104 hours per year. But the World Cup only happens once every FOUR years, so let's apply the same time period to Eastenders... 416 hours. Yes folks, over a four-year period, the World Cup accounts for 140 hours of TV and Eastenders accounts for 416.

But what's that, I hear you cry - "I watch Coronation Street"?? Well that gets shown five times a week in half-hour instalments, so over a four-year period that equates to 520 hours of primetime Northern drudgery.

And hey, let's not leave out Emmerdale. Everyone's favourite slice of life from the hills and dales of Yorkshire [yawn] gets shown six times a week, so in between World Cups you can expect to cram in around 625 hours worth, and not a cowpat in sight, mark you.

So have I made all that perfectly clear for you? Any discerning voices, please take note once and for all: the amount of time devoted to live World Cup matches is only a fraction of that spent showing EastEnders, Emmerdale or Coronation Street.

Funny that - no-one ever complains that there are too many soaps on TV...