Sky's the limit but their punditry is limited

This weekend saw the return of domestic football and, with it, the loud, brash, 'look at me' banner waving of Sky Sports.

Not that this comes as a surprise or, indeed, to the detriment of the viewer. Sky have been exactly the same since day one when they rolled out the cheerleaders and Richard Keys' hands were still impossibly hairy.

If you put your mind to it, you can almost successfully zone-out whenever Sky's follically over-compensated ringmaster bellows at you to 'WATCH IT IN 3D! GO ON! IT'S DEAD GOOD! I PROMISE!'

One area, however, in which Sky have become more irritating is in their deteriorating quality of punditry and their obvious sycophancy towards certain members of the footballing world - and apparent agenda against some others.

Watching the Community Shield, yesterday, you could almost be forgiven for thinking your television was autonomously flicking between MUTV and some sort of anti-Capello propaganda channel.

It started off all harmless enough, with Keys peddling out cliché after cliché about how 'it's good to be back' with 'the best league in the world' and him trying to flog you 3D TV, much in the same way as you would expect a street merchant in Marrakesh to try and palm a dodgy Rolex off on you for an unnecessarily exorbitant price.

Then Redknapp opened his mouth.

While he must be congratulated in managing to curb his misuse of the word 'literally', he threw away any chance of having his first decent game when he launched into an off-topic 'Capello has lost the plot' rant.

This rant can be summarised as: 'Capello is not good enough because he's not English enough'.

You almost get the feeling that he won't be happy until his old fella, whiter-than-white, diamond geezer, Harry Redknapp gets the job.

When, finally, Redknapp had tired himself out, picked up his dummy, and settled down for a nap during the game (not that it'd make much difference to his inane, paint-by-numbers, makes-Mark-Bright-look-insightful effort of an 'analysis' if he actually did falls asleep during the game) it was time to roll out an interview with His Holiness Lord Almighty The Overseer Most High Sir Alex Ferguson, to give him his full Sky Sports infobar name.

Well, calling it an 'interview' is probably over-egging it somewhat. That would imply probing and helpful questions were asked. They weren't.

Instead, Geoff Shreeves, boot polish and tongue at the ready, proceeded to make Jonathan Ross and Terry Wogan look like the Spanish Inquisition.

No queries on Michael Carrick's miraculous recovery, from being ruled out for two weeks on Friday to starting one-and-a-half days later. No probing on the possible transfer of Mesut Ozil. No anything.

The interview basically condensed into:

GS: "Good to be back, isn't it Sir Alex?"
AF: "Yes it is."
GS: "You're great."
AF: "Yes I am."
GS: "I love you."
AF: "I know."

Of course, the coverage of the game itself was, as usual, high quality stuff. No one can argue about that.

It's even possible to put up with the odd bit of salesmanship from Martin Tyler and the general torrent of verbal diarrhoea from Andy Gray. Although, even they are partial to a bit of a love-in.

After Javi Hernandez scored his farcical face-plant, complete with equally farcical badge-kissing celebration, Tyler and Gray waxed lyrical about 'yet another young gem unearthed by Sir Alex' and marvelled at his ability to find young talent, conveniently forgetting the likes of Tosic, Manucho, Djemba-Djemba, Liam Miller and Dong.

Although, to be fair to Tyler and Gray, they may have genuinely forgotten about them, such was their pointlessness.

After the game it was back to Richard and Jamie in the studio for, yet another edition of, the mind numbing state-the-obvious championship.

Sometimes you have to laugh at the sheer shallowness of it all, if only because the alternative is to put your foot through your TV.
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