BT Chief Executive Gavin Patterson must have been the only person jumping with joy when it was announced that BT Sport had secured the television rights to the Champions League for the next three seasons, in a deal worth £897 million.
Football’s flagship club competition had previously been shared between Sky Sports and ITV: the latter, of course, airs matches without charge. Sky have never been forced to hand over their domination of football coverage in the past, so the large scale intrusion of BT Sport into the historical domain of Murdoch’s media giant is certainly unprecedented.

The fact that Sky and BT are not even particularly competing – Sky largely covers the Premier League and BT the Champions League – is to the detriment of the paying customer. On a BT broadband package, the customer must pay an extra £5 per month for that indispensible midweek entertainment, or £19.99 on top of a Sky subscription. The watching of football is of course a necessity, so BT Sport’s exploitation of the market, compelling people to pay even more for such a fundamental service, is rather irritating.

However, just because they intend to make a profit, BT aren’t inherently evil. In any case, they have offered to air a minimum of 12 Champions League matches, including the final, for free (as well as 14 Europa League matches). What is evil, on the other hand, is BT Sport’s inadequacy as the channel to broadcast football’s elite competition.

Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher and Graeme Souness. This is the calibre of pundit that Sky Sports employs; they have been there and done it all. High-quality punditry is never more obviously on display than on the programme Monday Night Football, which involves a glorious hour pre- and post-match devoted to in-depth analysis by professionals who, although sometimes difficult to understand due to thick Scouse or Mancunian accents, played at the very highest level and therefore have genuinely illuminating knowledge of the game. Excusing his ‘goalgasm’ in the commentary box after Fernando Torres incredibly sent Chelsea through to the Champions League final by beating Barcelona, Gary Neville is the most erudite scholar of football.

Along with Alan Smith, pleasantly pro-Arsenal, Sky Sports have a solid team of pundits and co-commentators – not to mention the play-by-play legend that is Martin Tyler, whose exclamation of “Aguerooooo” as City won the title in 2012 surely goes down in history as one of the greatest set pieces of sporting commentary ever. Of course there is also a comic value in having Chris Kamara on the team, while Jeff Stelling consistently gives a stellar performance as presenter, especially alongside the likes of Paul Merson and Matt LeTissier on Gillette Soccer Saturday.

BT Sport, on the other hand, is something of a shambles. While the opportunity to watch live highlights in the Champions League Goals show (similar to the NFL’s Red Zone on Sky Sports) is an excellent concept and the addition of Gary Lineker as the matchday presenter deserves plaudits, the standard of punditry does not match that of Sky – it is inferior even to the ITV squad comprising of the incompetent Adrian Chiles, the obnoxious Roy Keane and the irksome Andy Townsend.

Michael Owen is the worst of a bad bunch. After this year’s Community Shield, which BT covered, Michael became the subject of much interest on social media. One tweet read: “How is it possible to watch a game live as well as have the benefit of a TV monitor & STILL get everything wrong? Classic Michael Owen”. Ouch. This is not a personal vendetta against Michael Owen; he is just bad at his job – biased, ill-informed and boring.

John Terry may have gone too far recently when he named Robbie Savage as someone unjustified in giving criticism because he has never won anything (or really done anything noteworthy) in his playing career. Savage’s defence was that he was simply speaking what everybody felt, and an absence of winners’ medals should not exclude pundits from taking on the job.

While Savage makes a decent point, it is tempting to side with Terry. After all, the paying TV customer does not want to hear what the average fan feels – that’s what radio phone-ins are for – but they do want to hear real advice from real experts in the profession…

While Rio Ferdinand, David James and Steve McManaman are all reasonable and knowledgeable pundits with sufficient experience, the same cannot be said about Owen Hargreaves and Paul Scholes. It is difficult to remember a time when Hargreaves ever said anything constructive about a team, or did not mention his own glory days as a footballer, which nobody actually remembers. Scholes, who deserves the utmost respect, simply cannot comprehend that most players are unable to make that pinpoint forty-yard pass which he would effortlessly ping, and so is a tiresomely negative character when it comes to passing judgment.

BT Sport desperately needs new signings to replace the current punditry team. A squad overhaul is desperately needed if they really want to be taken seriously.