Sky Sports ruin Christmas with choice of televised festive fixtures

Christmas is a time for giving. For spending cold winter afternoons with family. For drinking prosecco with breakfast. For watching wall-to-wall football.

Well, now it's easier to do the first three thanks to some interesting scheduling from Sky Sports. Is the broadcaster deliberately pissing on your Boxing Day cornflakes, or is it just being considerate enough to encourage you to sleep through your Boxing Day hangover without having to crowbar your eyes open for some rip-roaring AND IT'S LIVE action? That's for you to decide, but - with apologies to fans of the clubs concerned - the selection of televised games is not the type to set neutrals' pulses racing. The early kick-off sees Watford take on Crystal Palace. An obvious contender for TV after producing a Yohan Cabaye penalty and five shots on target last time around. In fact, that game was also televised - perhaps it just got fantastic viewing figures with fans desperate to take in the midfield meeting of minds between José Jurado and Joe Ledley. The other televised game is Hull v Manchester City, or the Geovanni Derby as it will never be known. That one at least has a more impressive recent past, with the visitors picking up an impressive 4-2 win at the KC Stadium in September 2014, but is it really a better bet than...no, actually none of the other games look great on paper. Maybe we were a bit too harsh - you can only work with the material you've got. We get the sense that a few more board games will be played than usual in quite a few households up and down the country.