Larry Ryan: Is it the last bantz for Sky Soccer Saturday?

On Wednesday, Jeff Stelling lamented 'one of my saddest days ever at Sky Sports with the departure of three of my best mates'.

Jeff Stelling and the panel during a Gillette Soccer Saturday Live Show in 2012. Word is Jeff is disillusioned with the show. Picture: Bryn Lennon/Getty

As Charlie Nicholas once put it, 'you’d need Medusa to predict that'.

But it has come to pass — Charlie, Matt Le Tissier, and Phil Thompson have been turned to stone, or at least axed from Sky Soccer Saturday.

Even their great puppet master probably didn’t see this one coming. Asked, a couple of years ago, if the panel needed freshening up, Jeff Stelling said: “I don’t mean to sound complacent, but if it ain't broke don’t fix it. And I don’t think it’s broke.” 

On Wednesday, Jeff lamented 'one of my saddest days ever at Sky Sports with the departure of three of my best mates'.

I suppose you didn’t need to be Medusa to see the writing on the wall, last season when they started to dabble in squad rotation. When Clinton Morrison or Matt Murray would come in for one of the regulars.

But now we’re in the territory of ‘wholesale changes’. This is Sky ‘going in a different direction’.

Naturally, like everything these days, the story has attracted the ‘PC gone mad’ brigade, automatically inclined to make this all about the whiteness of the jettisoned trio.

But of course, you wouldn’t need to rely on their race to make a case for dismantling the Soccer Saturday panel. Their critics would doubtless draw on other descriptors for the lads, such as dated, out of touch, clichéd.

A one-stop shop for ‘your da’ arguments — that Guardiola is overrated, that VAR is ruining the game, that you need a British spine, and that Big Sam never got the credit he deserved.

Some think it’s all over, anyway, this way of life they have popularised, the lads and their founding fathers — Rodney Marsh, George Best, Alan Mullery and Frank McLintock.

Since lockdown turned punters away from sport, it has never seemed more important that we grab a glimpse of the action, by hook or by crook. So people have been climbing into the front loaders of JCBs and sourcing Instagram streams. 

And news that the FA has sacrificed the 3pm broadcast blackout next season, and that all Premier League games are likely to be shown live, and Championship games streamed, further nails the idea that we’ll ever again be satisfied to stay in the loop via other people’s yelping.

To wait ‘til we hear which way’s it gone, Charlie.

Was that the show’s central appeal, the suspense, the gameshow vibe?

GOAAALLLLLL!

There’s been another at Villa Park, BUT FOR WHO?

It didn’t hurt, their natural ability to make a drama out of if. And whatever their faults, those of us who loved it are entitled to regard this as another pillar collapsing in a world that made sense to us. Like Messi leaving Barcelona.

Maybe Charlie summed up the whole operation best, in his famous description of one 3pm cracker. “I know it was loaded with mistakes but this was everything we ask of the Premier League.” 

The five of them created a place with its own dialect of worldies and Desmonds and hitting the beans.

Thommo was the cranky uncle with a benign belligerence, who dealt in meandering unpredictable sentences pre-match but when the games kicked off filled us in with cryptic bursts in a language stripped down and rebuilt for his own purposes.

"Just watch the eyes what he give him."

He was still good for a turn of phrase, Thommo, or at least a phrase turned inside out.

"He's like a flash in the pan all the time."

"He hits it first time with his second touch.” 

In Tiss, they had a contrarian, who could build an argument, who understood, for instance, that it was his job to stand up for VAR. Unfortunately, this compulsion has lately drawn him into some dangerous areas. And he threatened to become the Jim Corr of this foursome.

But crucial to their longevity was the show’s handling of banter, a dangerous force that has brought too many men down, including their predecessor Marshy.

In general, this was bantz in recommended doses.

Sure, Jeff would spit out high-grade puns all day for you: “Scott Leather’s been sent off. That’ll be hell for Leather.” “Herring has been sent off, red Herring.” “Down to 10 men. Andy Sandell has put his foot in it.” 

But it was never bantz for the sake of bantz. The football, they always made clear, was far too important for that.

Maybe it helped, that in the banter era, it boasted a central figure, in Charlie Nicholas, who became renowned for his lack of banter.

When old pros talk wistfully about missing the dressing room banter, they aren’t thinking of Charlie.

“You couldn't eat one marathon a day, never mind walk one.” 

“This game probably reminds me of your wallet, Jim, it doesn't open very often.” 

And the marvelous time the Internet will never forget, when Jeff told him to go to Specsavers, because that wasn’t offside.

“Maybe you should go also then Jeff because you couldn’t see driving home the other night, because you don’t even wear your glasses on TV in case you get slagged off. You just stick to Specsavers and I’ll do the game.” 

Maybe Sky are taking it for granted, that lovely chemistry between five men that allowed them these little strops with each other live on TV.

Who threw themselves heart and soul into the difficult business of bringing alive a game of football we couldn’t see.

That was surely the chief appeal, that they made Saturday afternoons a happy place, even if the result went against you.

Five friends who seemed to enjoy each other's company. And who became entirely unselfconscious on television, whether scoffing their lunch, or dancing to James Brown, or yelping that the beans had been struck at the Amex.

The key pillar is standing. As long as Jeff is there, Rome can be rebuilt. With Kammy phoning in the unbelievables. And Merse, once a fish up a tree, now the star turn, the great survivor.

Though word is Jeff is disillusioned so maybe it truly is the last bantz and if it is, some of us will be hit hard. 

As Merse might put it: “They could probably walk under a snake with a top hat on, they’re that low.”