Premier League 2025-26 review: broadcasters of the season

The BBC’s triple threat has been a hit on Match of the Day while TalkSport’s Sports Bar fits these football times

Kelly Cates, Gabby Logan and Mark Chapman

With Gary Lineker gone after 26 years, the BBC opted, in replacing a big beast, for a triple threat for Match of the Day duties. Lineker’s dad jokes are gone, and so is the going off-piste on social media controversy, now that three of the most solid pros in the business have the anchor. Not that the game’s big issues are sidestepped, each of the trio is a fully trained-up broadcast journalist with an attendant wealth of experience. If in “Chappers”, there is a residual, clubbable blokiness and the trademark giggle of the former Radio 1 sidekick, both of his co-hosts are just as happy to join in the fun. Both Logan and Cates possess the icy, sardonic armoury to cut Micah Richards and Alan Shearer down to size when required should the incumbent, top-band pundits get ahead of themselves. All three have even been known to get Danny Murphy laughing. The revolving cast has supplied a largely seamless transition, and in lowering the heat on a BBC forever targeted by certain vessels, a definite success.

Joe Hart

An accusation during Hart’s playing career was that he was slow to learn from his mistakes, beaten down to his left too often to be a top, top-class goalie. Halting beginnings to his punditry career were unpromising, the voice a little monotone, the analysis too anodyne, rather like Alan Shearer’s early days with a microphone. This season, Hart has come into his own. There are other goalkeeper pundits around, with Shay Given’s toothy bonhomie and Peter Schmeichel’s world-weary gripes confirmed members of the punditocracy, but the HartDog has added bite and expertise. And, by the sounds of it, responded well to coaching, with smooth analysis, particularly in narrating over VT. Hart is unafraid to express opinions though not in the scattergun mould of Roy Keane. “He just says stuff,” Hart said this season of Keane, who has given him a verbal lash or two in the past. “I know the impact, especially now with social media. He doesn’t care but I take huge responsibility in my new role.” Can this new brand of ethical, holistic punditry prove sustainable? Hart being a man in demand suggests it can.

Darren Fletcher and Ally McCoist

The suspicion now is that Fletch and Coisty spend more time in each other’s company than they do their respective spouses. There may well be a significant proportion of the populace who spend more time in Fletch and Coisty’s company than they do in anyone else’s. It can certainly feel like that during European weeks on TNT. Such ubiquity has its problems, and as a comedy pairing they are still searching for a catchphrase beyond “I’ll tell you what, Fletch” or “in the Champions League/Europa League/Conference League” (delete as applicable). Fletcher’s reeling off of statistics is helpful if veering on the relentless, occasionally colliding with key moments. McCoist’s everyman charms sustain from the days when he was opposing team captain to John Parrott on Question of Sport, though perhaps a Sue Barker figure to hoot along with him and Fletch should be considered. Occasional interjections from the monotone of Steven Gerrard as a disembodied third wheel just aren’t cutting it.

Kate Scott

Certain TV shows seize the zeitgeist to create a template that widely influences and is soon facsimiled by others. CBS’s Champions League productions have had a similar effect to that Channel 4’s The Word had in the 1990s, when rival broadcasters tried their best to match the impact of this new variation on zoo TV. Chris Evans was definitely watching. Like fellow Mancunian Terry Christian on The Word, Scott’s job is to keep matters under a semblance of control as Thierry Henry, Micah Richards and Jamie Carragher let loose anarchy, much of their excitable behaviour unallowable on more staid broadcasters. It has made for a worldwide hit, even when most of the anglophone world cannot watch the show live, legally at least. This is the era of the viral clip, fired into social metaverses in the hope of banging hard; few have been as successful as this as Scott et al. In such a brave new world the BBC’s venerable Football Focus was forced to hang up its boots. With CBS sister company Paramount having captured UK Champions League rights from 2027, it is likely to import Scott’s expert corralling of her three stooges.

Jason Cundy and Jamie O’Hara

To say TalkSport’s Sports Bar is not to everyone’s taste is to place it mildly. A late-night, post-pub banter zone is where Angry From Manchester and Desolate of Theydon Bois coalesce to sizzle piping hot takes on the football issues of the day. The aim of the game is ratcheting up the mounting hysteria, and few are as adept at winding the audience and each other up as Cundy and O’Hara, former Premier League footballers, hardly star names in their previous chosen profession but bigger names now, with definite chemistry between them. The football phone-in show, user-generated content before such a thing was a buzz phrase among media execs, has taken several, often regrettable turns since Danny Baker pioneered the genre. The approach of Cundy and O’Hara is unapologetic. “Has anyone seen?” is Cundy’s intro to the latest club or individual he is digging out. O’Hara’s smirks, and rising to his mate’s jibes, only add to the fun, as do the custom-designed masks that lend proceedings a Punch & Judy quality. It shouldn’t work, for many it might be unlistenable, but few shows fit these football times so readily.