Chris Sutton and The Art of Speaking Dangerously

At the dawning of the television age, the public embraced those who could tell them more about the world they lived in or how it came to be. In the late 1960s and 1970s, series like Civilisation and The Ascent of Man became widely popular and made stars of their presenters Kenneth Clark and Jacob Bronowski.

Clark was awarded a life peerage thanks to his TV show and became known as Lord Clark of Civilisation. According to a new biography, an envious colleague referred to him as Lord Clark of Trivialisation.

No pundit has yet been awarded a peerage for his role in informing the public about the world of football and how it came to be, but in time maybe we will look upon pundits with the same sense of awe and respect as many viewed Clark and Bronowski.

Clark defined civilised values as moral virtues and, of course, this has echoes of John Giles’ lifelong commitment to explaining the moral courage which is required on a football field.

For some, Chris Sutton’s interventions last week suggested a man unwilling to go with a consensus and hinted perhaps at another form of moral courage.

Last weekend, Sutton took issue on Match of the Day 2 with the idea that Claudio Bravo had a fine game in the Manchester derby. He received much public support for disputing that a goalkeeper whose mistake led to one goal and subsequently should have been sent off and given away a penalty had played well.

Sutton may have been wrong in his dismissal of aspects of Bravo’s contribution, but being right has never mattered as much in punditry as some seem to think. In fact, this thinking has led to the tiresome analysis of big decisions and arguments about offside, rather than discussions of the great issues at stake.

So it didn’t matter if Sutton was right, what mattered was his reluctance to embrace the consensus that was developing.

If there is an absence of poetry in Sutton’s delivery, it is outweighed by the directness of his delivery. Sutton has the air of a double glazing salesman who sits in your kitchen and wins you over by expressing doubts about some of the costs his firm add on to any quote, before breezily announcing, “Now let me go and measure up the lounge.”

There is a subversive quality to his punditry which is essential and only emphasises how important the job has become.

“People who have opinions and say what they think are few and far between in the game and I have been accused of speaking out of turn at times,” Sutton said recently. “I suspect that is because some people don’t like hearing the truth if it is not a very palatable truth.”

Later in the week, Sutton took issue with Roy Keane’s comments on Celtic, bringing some perspective and nuance where there had previously been mainly simmering rage.

https://twitter.com/SportsJOEdotie/status/777099530315657216

Keane, too, has been acclaimed for delivering unpalatable truths, while he has the gift of making even palatable truths seem unpalatable when he delivers them.

Keane’s contributions tend to focus on the great themes that have dominated his life and while this relentlessness worked for him as a player, television sometimes requires more nuance.

Keane may once have viewed punditry as a trivial business, but, if it is, it one of the important trivialities that make up our lives.

Soon, perhaps, pundits like Jamie Carragher won’t be asked if they plan to make a move into management and it will be accepted that the role they have chosen can have as much importance as managing. Of course, others like Thierry Henry should be encouraged to pursue coaching careers whenever possible.

It is too early to say what impact Gary Neville’s experiment with management will have on his punditry. Neville may have been foolish in accepting the Valencia job, but it was an understandable foolishness. Becoming Roy Hodgson’s assistant while he worked on Sky was different.

Helping out with England was the triviality in that case and some of us always feared that it could jeopardise the important work he was doing on television.

When Neville took the Valencia job, Tony Pulis said he had told Carragher not to waste too much time before getting into management himself, a reflection of the old world views which sees TV as essentially messing around with gadgets rather than a proper contribution to the world.

Some pundits have viewed it in that way too as they seem to consider their appearances on TV a test in which they must say nothing in as many different ways as possible before being asked back to do it all again next week.

Happily, men like Neville and Carragher have reminded us of the transformative power of television.

When Clark and Bronowski were educating the world, ITV came up with a panel for the 1970 World Cup which brought men like Malcolm Allison and Paddy Crerand to the screen, before they were joined in later years by Brian Clough.

There was an innocence then, a lack of awareness of the power and danger that came from allowing certain people to go on television and say what was on their minds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrLOJtD6Zd4

Allison accused Alan Mullery of being unfit for international football when England lost to Germany which resulted in Mullery angrily turning up at the studios when he returned from Mexico and a heated debate took place.

For some reason, peerages eluded these men and they may have alarmed those who feel that the truth, however it appears, is something that shouldn't be heard too often. Since then, armies have been employed to keep it from the screens. But we recognise it when we hear it and it should never be considered trivial.

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