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Sport

16th Jan 2017

No football on Monday night but Jamie Carragher and Sky Sports have made everyone’s week

Fantastic news

Conan Doherty

The life of a football fan is a very simple existence.

We just want football, whether we like it or not.

When we have football, we just want extra time. When we have extra time, we just want penalties.

We just want the whole thing to be extended and we definitely do not want any of it interrupted with bloody international breaks. Football or not.

We want the Christmas period of football every week. We want games on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. And when they’re all done with, we want them dissected to death.

We want analysis. We want opinions. We even want boys who haven’t got a clue what they’re talking about filling up space 0n our television sets just so we can slag them or argue with our family and friends about it. Why do you think everyone puts up with Paul Merson?

With all the coverage that the Premier League gets, it still doesn’t get enough.

There’s still a gap in the market for more. Monday Night Football, for example, should be a show on its own. The football, in that instance, is just a bloody distraction. There’s a time for action and there’s a time for talking and, when Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville are going at it, no-one wants anything more than chatter.

Unfortunately, the craic is interrupted by two bouts of 45 minutes of football when it’s not necessary. Move the games to Tuesday – take another and put it on Wednesday – but just let us talk and debate on Monday evenings, for the love of God.

Still, you’d take a game of football over nothing and, when the realisation sank in on Sunday evening that there’d be no Premier League clashes again until Liverpool host Swansea on Saturday lunch time, panic hit.

Five full days without football (apart from two midweek League Cup clashes…) and you’d seriously wonder if you’d make it through or not.

Thankfully, Sky Sports have stepped in and Jamie Carragher delivered the news that everyone wanted to hear.

On Monday night at 7pm, Sky Sports 1 will have an hour-long special of Monday Night Football.

The bad news? It’s Thierry instead of Gary.

One good English pundit replaced with another questionable English pundit. Good to see English pundits getting a chance though. Ain’t that right, Merse?