IT would surely be only right and diligent for the BBC to conduct market research into its most expensive programmes, and so we must assume there are large numbers of people out there somewhere who tell the focus groups and fill out the feedback forms with the names of Jermaine Jenas and Danny Murphy.

Somewhere there are actual human beings who complete a questionnaire by ticking a “strongly agree” box to the question: is Alan Shearer an insightful analyst?

A whole horde of people must enjoy hearing Shearer say “wow” and “he’s unbelievable”, and “exceptional” and “that’s world class”, every time he is explaining that the good thing that we all just saw was good. There must be a whole audience out there responding to this in-depth research who like the fact that Shearer has never shared anything illuminating gleaned from his successful playing career.

Listen out next time and see if he breaks character to tell us anything shrewd or tactical. Of course, there’s no way that these studio positions are simply filled because the fellow presenters have grown into close buddies, who enjoy sharing wows with each other. The BBC is publicly funded and beyond our eyes must be doing ruthless research and the polls must all be coming back with demand for more from these figures. Therefore it’s you who wants to hear Murphy saying “not for me, Guy”and explaining that a player writhing in pain from a poleaxe foul will be up in a minute.

It’s you who wants to hear Jenas telling the world’s elite players what they should be doing. When people say Lionel Messi needed a World Cup winner’s medal to really cement his position as the greatest of all time, you have to wonder what decoration is needed to be chosen as the one narrating the biggest match every four years.

We know the data collection isn’t done on Twitter, because if Murphy ever searches the words “Danny” and “Murphy” together on social media then he’d drop the mic and simply head to his local pub to play the football bar bore there instead.

What we are left with is a media bubble enjoying a sunny work trip, convincing themselves that Qatar was one of the best World Cups… and that Shearer is brimming with animation, if you just get the chance to know him.

Granted, its final 40 minutes was pure drama, but the whole tournament was beset with quality issues. Take the winner, Argentina: they lost to Saudi Arabia and twice needed penalty kicks to get through their knockout games.

So it’s dancing in the streets of Bueno Aires for only beating Mexico, Poland, Australia and Croatia outright.

But yeah, wow, exceptional, world class…