BT Sport Blunder With Chris Sutton As Co-Commentator!

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I am not going to lie, when Liverpool announced that Gary McAllister was going to be their new first-team coach my initial concern was ‘Who will BT Sport replace Gary with on co-comms duty for Scottish football games?‘

Well today we had Chris Sutton joining Derek Rae in the commentary box.

For me, it will be a huge mistake if BT keeps with the former Celtic striker as the co-commentator. He’s more suited as a studio guest who can think before he speaks.

In Derek Rae, they have the best commentator in the business for me. He is highly polished, has a great commentators voice and does impeccable research.

But having Sutton along side him doesn’t make any sense.

The Englishman has a monotone voice that just isn’t suited to the role of co-commentator. He only really got slightly animated when his younger brother John scored for St Johnstone. The fact that BT Sport’s SPFL twitter account had to mention it was cringeworthy:

Sutton has a history of being opinionated, ideal for a tabloid newspaper column but not great for the commentary box as the viewer is looking for analysis. That side let Chris down, he didn’t really convey anything that the viewer hadn’t seen for themselves. With no insight, all you are getting is just another voice talking over the game.

I also think that BT Sport need to take the Scottish product more seriously.

With Scottish football your main audience will always be Scottish. Yet we have a sidekick who hasn’t been in the Scottish game since 2006! It reminds me of their Europa League coverage, which heavily included Celtic last year. Yet during the build up BT went with a panel in the studio who were French, German or Italian journos and in all honesty they knew very little about Celtic or the Scottish game. That meant that viewers that had tuned in to watch a Scottish side in Europe were short changed as the studio guests talked continuously about other sides. I

n truthfulness it looks as though BT Sport just see the Scottish game as an after thought and that’s just not good enough. It’s such a shame that after witnessing a great 4-3 win for Hearts over St Johnstone, that I just couldn’t get over the fact that Sutton was given the important job as co-commentator.

Now I have no personal vendetta against Chris Sutton, if he continues in that role I truly hope he improves quickly. I don’t think a Celtic bias will be an issue, I just think he lacks the ability to transfer his knowledge into words and can’t get excited enough to keep the audience on his side!

Don’t just take my word for it, just search ‘Chris Sutton‘ on Twitter. You’ll struggle to find any complimentary tweets (I couldn’t). He seems to have the unique knack of bringing the whole of Scottish football together in stating their dislike for his lack of ability in the co-commentators role!

Here’s a sample of those tweets (the ones I could include without the swearing).

Posted on August 2nd, 2015 by scott
Filed under: Article

2 Responses to “BT Sport Blunder With Chris Sutton As Co-Commentator!”

  1. Slice, on October 14th, 2016 at 9:44 PM Said:

    Just watched first bt sport game this season and found out how bad Chris Sutton is…………….says a lot about but sport!

  2. George Stevenson, on November 4th, 2016 at 8:59 PM Said:

    Chris Sutton is the worst commentator by a country mile I’ve ever heard .He is always trying to sensationalise even the most trivial incidents rather than doing what he is paid to do and comment on the game.People are more than capable of making their own judgements.He makes Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher sound like superstars which they certainly are not.He surely has got to be replaced sooner rather than later.

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