Is that what you want?

Cos that’s what’ll ‘appen.

Why would anyone want to fork out £4.99 never mind the day of the game price of £11.99 to watch a meaningless World Cup qualifier between England and Ukraine on teh interweb.

Now I’ve tuned into ITV’s web broadcast of previous England games when I’ve had no other way of viewing the game but I certainly wouldn’t have paid for it. The games have been on after 6 o’clock on a Wednesday or on a Saturday, in other words prime time for ISP to throttle back all the bandwidth, none of that promised 8MB/s download speed. So what starts as a bit of a blurry picture has that little buffering icon pop up every so often – the adverts never crap out though do they, same with Freeview, high winds crap out the signal but only during the actual programme you’re watching never those ever increasing ad breaks.

Even if the picture was of the highest quality I still wouldn’t fork out any cash to listen to those buffoons ITV employ to annoy the viewer, I know it’s a surprise isn’t it, why wouldn’t I want to hand over cash to listen to Clive Tyldesley try and mention a certain ManUre game in Barcelona, or Pleat mispronounce names of English players never mind the foreign ones. Surely a penny under a fiver is well worth it to have the insight of Steve “I don’t really like football, I’m a rugby, golf, F1, man myself” Ryder try and convince us it’s his sport while eliciting some pearls of wisdom from those giants of the modern game Andy Townshend and Wobbie Earle.

Well it ain’t ITV that are doing it this time, after being priced out of the game by the rights holders appointed by the Ukrainian officials after Setanta went tits up, but the thought of sitting through a Svennis monologue and watching Gerrard et al, ponce their way through another undeserved cap in a game that means nothing now England have qualified for South Africa and paying for the privilege is just not going to happen.

But if folks do and do so in large enough numbers, though the number has been capped at one million subscribers, then it’ll give others bright ideas. Rio Ferdinand thinks it’s a great idea because that’s where he was told the money is, I wonder who told him, and we all know that lesser spotted duck billed Ferdinand – only two known to exist in the wild – is only interested in the money, well his next bit of bling has to come from someones pocket, someone other than him of course, innit.

So if you are one of those who is going to subscribe then don’t start whinging when in future more and more games are done this way…

Is that what you want?…Cos that’s what’ll ‘appen.

Les bloody Dennis