Published: 16 January, 2014

ARSENAL
HOW nice that all-round-best-person-in-history Thierry Henry has turned up on Match of the Day and has been signed up for the BBC coverage for the World Cup.

About time because, sure as hell, there needs to be a bit more charisma on the BBC telly football.

I’d have voted for him for that job.

And maybe we should get a vote for such a role.

So if you disagree and wrongly think Thierry was a handballing big-game bottler, then you could take part in a poll and could stop him appearing.

It’s bizarrely important as to who the BBC decides should sit opposite Gary Lineker.

These pundits take up an inordinate amount of our lives while we are waiting to see our team’s goals.

We are trapped.

Waiting.

Listening.

Imagine being a fly on the wall in recruitment, the producers brainstorming names.

Someone, somewhere actually said with their real life mouths: “Howsabout sharing the sage thoughts of Kevin Kilbane? Let’s get him. And Danny Mills. Everyone loved Danny Mills.” More worrying, Alan Shearer, that walking continent of charisma, seems A-list MOTD royalty.

There seems to be a ban on anybody but Hansen discussing the tactics of the game, leaving us with laugh-a-long robots telling us the spectacular thing we just saw was spectacular.

It would be better for the BBC to have no pundits at all, save the (public) cash, and spend it on getting more live football.

Instead, we are handed Robbie Savage at every turn. Who seriously would have voted for Robbie Savage in a referendum?

You can hear the planners melting themselves with how crazy old Robbie is going to bring a zany edge to the coverage.

He’ll make Thierry look like a football Yoda.
RICHARD OSLEY

TOTTENHAM HOTSPUR
GARY Lineker didn’t quite get it right when he said the phrase “squeaky bum time” was bandied about for the first time this season on Saturday.

We’ve been banging on about it for ages. Well, it’s hard not to when you’re surrounded by Gooners who haven’t changed their lucky underpants since the end of August.

Gary was, however, correct in saying that the squeaks reached a crescendo this week and it wasn’t only the grind of unwashed undies on lardy Gooner rear-ends that was responsible for the sound.

It was results on the pitch.

Truth is that now Spurs are resurgent, Gooners are worried they’ll have to battle with us for fourth place again come May.

Admittedly, it took the worst penalty miss since Diana Ross opened the 1994 World Cup to set us up against Crystal Palace, but at least our second-half performance proved that Tim Sherwood knows which socket to plug the hairdryer into.

Whether AVB ever used a hairdryer on anything other than his luxurious locks remains a mystery, although he must have  got that Joe Cocker rasp from somewhere.

All that’s behind us now though and instead we have a geezer at the helm who refers to himself in the third person. No matter, the good news is that he’s not Paolo Di Canio.

And he’s got us on quite a run. What’s the secret? Maybe it’s Tim’s mantra that it doesn’t matter how talented you are, you have to have “desire” to win anything.

He’s right – so isn’t it a shame to let Jermain Defoe go? If ever a player shows the desire to score it’s him. Let’s hope Spurs bosses have the desire to replace him.

If they can.
CATHERINE ETOE