WHY SAY ANYTHING?

Mountains and molehills, sow’s ears and silk purses. A couple of adages the meaning of which Sky Sports is desperately trying to demonstrate. They are doing their level best to make mountains out of ever-decreasing molehills and they have several sow’s ears out of which, as yet, they have been unable to produce anything even remotely resembling a silk purse.

The prevailing problem at the Sky Sports Transfer Centre is that there have been no real transfers of any note and it doesn’t appear there will be any in the foreseeable future.

Dedicating time, a commodity of which they have a large surplus, to a programme concentrating solely on football transfers and airing it three times daily was always going to be a stretch of the patience of the viewing public. When there is little or nothing happening it is just yet another repeat to add to their collection, which is sizeable.

To be fair, Sky is not at all concerned about the amount of repeats they show and will air almost anything on a regular basis to fill any gaps, of which there are many.

Rolling out retired footballers who had careers which were, generally, nothing more than average, to comment on this rumour or that rumour does not make for riveting television.

Listening to Ray Parlour and Tony Gale waffle on about how good a signing this player would be for that club and what a coup it would be if this club could get that player is not the attraction Sky obviously seem to think it is.

Then there are the voices! Do Sky TV deliberately search out presenters with annoying, rasping voices? Or is it just my sensitive ears which hears them in such a way as to force me into changing channel? The most irritating of all has to be Rob Wotton. How his inane questions and terrible speaking voice can be seen as a viewer magnet by Sky is totally beyond we here at WSA. He alone has been the main reason we have not watched any of the transfer centres in their entirety throughout this window.

We have, in all honesty, watched a couple for a few minutes in order to gauge how inanimate a window this has been, a fact which Sky absolutely refuses to admit.

Anyone would think that the potential transfer of Robert Snodgrass from Hull to one of Middlesbrough, West Ham or Burnley was up there with Lionel Messi going to Wycombe. It isn’t, now if only Sky could be convinced of that truth then we could all move on to something more important. Except there isn’t anything more important and that’s the whole point.

Currently, watching synchronised swimming would be more exciting than the transfer window, (with apologies to all synchronised swimmers reading this article, we know that what you do is very precise and skilful, it’s just boring).

Never mind, soon it will be the turn of another annoyance to grace our screens and try to make absolutely nothing sound like absolutely everything. Jim White will appear, suitably decked out in yellow tie which, like the yellow ribbon, hopes for the speedy return of missed loved ones, in this case for, “missed loved ones” read, “any transfer news“.

He will be the MC on the final night and will waver between distraught disbelief as one of Sky’s reportedly nailed-on transfers goes all pear-shaped, and unparalleled excitement as somebody signs a contract extension at Torquay. None of this will camouflage the fact that he has the second most irritating voice on TV and we, the long suffering viewer, will go to bed with it still ringing in our ears because, despite this being inflicted upon us, we love football and will put up with almost anything for a fix of the stuff.

When it is all over we can return to normality. The only irritations until the August window will be the likes of Geoff Shreeves whose annoying voice will ask even more banal and annoying questions of managers and players alike, (only Kenny Dalglish and Gordon Strachan ever gave truthful replies when questioned by this man).

And Martin Tyler. Oh, and Ben Shephard. Wait a minute, we almost forgot Richard Keys, now at Bein Sports where he is just as annoying as he was at Sky but with more self-importance!

Which sports presenters, punters or personalities are a source of annoyance for you? Post your frustrations in the comments section below and we will keep track of who gets the most mentions!