Alan Green BBC Contract Not Renewed

GaryLifo

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Remember during the 02/03 season he was doing the phone in show on the day Arsenal had just beaten someone like Middlesbrough. Arsenal were several points ahead of United and he was essentially setting the discussion along the lines of

"Arsenal fans, please ring up and celebrate your 2nd title in a row"

He was the first person I thought of as I watched United lift the trophy at the end of the season. The bitter biased prick.
 

dal

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Not sure how many people actually listened to the radio.

If you listen to his commentary on the 98/99 champions league final he’s anything but biased.

He’s an outstanding commentator.
 

711

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I've listened to him on the radio whilst travelling and then watched the same match later and found it to be utterly different from the one he was watching. Complete feckwit, should never have been employed.
 

GaryLifo

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Not sure how many people actually listened to the radio.

If you listen to his commentary on the 98/99 champions league final he’s anything but biased.

He’s an outstanding commentator.
I've heard that a few times. "Bayern don't know what's hit them.... MANCHESTER HAS HIT THEM"

A rare exception that proves the rule
 

The Brown Bull

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Not sure how many people actually listened to the radio.

If you listen to his commentary on the 98/99 champions league final he’s anything but biased.

He’s an outstanding commentator.
I did.I was in Spain, couldn't get a ticket so watched it in a restaurant with BBC radio commentary.
Green in my opinion is still a buffoon and was an ABU when it came to the Premiership.Good riddence.
 

Drifter

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Good riddance . Maybe he will be replaced with someone that commentates on the game and does not go on about his personal gripes.
 

Judas

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Not sure how many people actually listened to the radio.

If you listen to his commentary on the 98/99 champions league final he’s anything but biased.

He’s an outstanding commentator.
He's got worse over the years though, he's jaded and bitter and you can tell he's got a real disdain for what the sport has become.
 

JPRouve

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I don't know him but based on this thread consensus I will celebrate the news.
 

SteveJ

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Wikipedia said:
In 2020 the BBC announced that Green's contract with BBC Radio 5Live would not be renewed. The BBC let a lot of senior broadcasters go early in 2020, many to cries of uproar from colleagues. Not one BBC employee lamented Green's impending departure. Green's esteemed fellow football reporter at the BBC, Mike Ingham, who was in fact the BBC Football Correspondent and who worked with Green for 30 years made no mention of Green in his recently published memories despite pouring praise on many other of his contemporaries.
 

Salt Bailly

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I could never bring myself to hate Alan Green. It was his commentary I was listening to in a Somerfield car park in April 1999 as my mum did her weekly big shop and Ryan Giggs banged in the best goal of all time. Up there with the greatest moments of my life.
 
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MAME DIOUF 32

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Radio commentary is a real skill and I'm not sure I can think of anyone better, even if his biases have pissed me off a lot. A bad decision.
 

12OunceEpilogue

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This post details the ridiculous way in which Green reacted to the VAR calls made during City's CL game with Schalke. Pat Nevin had to explain to him over and over why the linesmen weren't raising their flags until the ball was out of play, and after he'd been proven wrong and made to look a tit all he could do was double down on his moaning. That's the thing with him, leaving his abrasive style and possible ABUisms to one side when your number two has to pretty much beg you to stop being an arse live on air you know you've lost the plot.
 

2mufc0

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No big deal.
 

SteveJ

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Here's Green's view, in about a billion words:

Green lamented in an interview with Henry Winter in The Times, “They have shown me very little respect in how that is ending. I feel a mixture of disappointment and anger. I don't think it's justified. I was basically told, 'You don't fit our profile.' I got a fair idea of what they meant by just listening to the output over the last year or so. There isn’t an ageist, sexist, racist bone in my body.

"I only care about ‘Can somebody do the job?’ There are new people in favour. They match the requirements in terms of ‘bants’ — banter with presenters.”

Green also criticised the BBC's decision to drop Mark Pougatch as well as its flagship sports news show, Sportsweek, last year, describing the latter as "a much-respected programme that was discarded”.

“It’s not the organisation I loved for so many years,” Green added.

“I hear about the departure of Mark Pougatch, an absolutely outstanding presenter, and I’m really pleased that he is valued by so many other people [like BT Sport] that he probably doesn’t notice not doing 5 Live any more. Certain people have been discarded wrongly in pursuit of change. That’s OK if it is thought through and it works but I’m not sure it is working.”

He 'graduated' to Match of the Day in 2014 but didn't feel it was going anywhere and gave that up three years ago.

Green commented on his departure from MotD: “It’s not a big deal. I was doing, at most, 10 commentaries a season. There’s nothing sinister there. It’s just that I’d get a game and often be fifth or sixth in the running order, so it wasn’t really going anywhere. The team on Match of the Day were really good to work with and it’s been good to do television commentary, so I suppose the scratch has been itched, yes.”

Much of this was made public via an interview with Henry Winter in The Times, which continues:

The BBC defends its position, as a senior source says: “Yes, the BBC is having to look at its strategy for young audiences otherwise we will become quickly irrelevant, but that does not come at the expense of authority, knowledge and experience.”

What seems strange about the BBC not wanting to keep Green is that, in many ways, he is the ideal commentator for many in this era who want spiky opinion. “Being honest is the only way I know how to do it,” he says. It’s brought him some run-ins, most notably with Sir Alex Ferguson and Sam Allardyce.

“I had immense respect for Alex in what he did as the manager of Manchester United. It is a matter of great sadness to me that we haven’t spoken for 28 years,” Green adds. “It was all about one incident when he misled the Friday press conference about team news about Mark Hughes’s availability. I was doing the commentary on the Saturday at Old Trafford and I said, ‘I’ve learned not to listen to any propaganda that might be coming out of the manager’s afternoon office on a Friday. I will try to recognise the United players when they come out on to the pitch!’ It was done as much for humour but, by God, somebody obviously told him, and he confronted me, and he said, ‘You don’t fecking pick my team’. I said, ‘Don’t tell me fecking lies, tell me nothing.’ 28 years of silence since.

“With Allardyce, I just didn’t like the style of football his teams tended to play. I do remember going up to him at the end of one season, 2004, when Sam was out working [at the European Championship in Portugal], and I was staying at same hotel. I said, ‘I can’t speak highly enough of how well you have done this season when Bolton finished eighth.’ I put my hand out, and he turned away."

“I am perfectly happy for people to disagree with me as long as they accepted it was honest and heartfelt. Other people [in broadcasting] say something stupid to provoke a reaction on social media. Definitely! It’s not my style. I get threats on trains, and threats outside certain grounds. You just have to take it and walk on."

“After the 1999 Champions League final, early the following season, I was at Old Trafford, and this guy came up to me, and I thought, ‘Oh, God, what’s he going to say? Is it going to be hostile?’ He said, ‘I’ve got to get you to listen to this.’ And he played his ringtone which was my commentary on the Solskjaer goal! Fantastic!”

Green’s thoughts scrolled back to Manchester United’s semi-final that year against Juventus.

“I always had this gritty admiration for Roy Keane,” he says. I thought Roy was immense in terms of his character and drive. I remember vividly the night of the Turin game when Roy was booked and would miss the final. We journalists always got on the plane after the players were already sitting there. Roy was sitting on his own, window seat. I just leant over to him, and said, ‘I’m so, so sorry, you don’t deserve to miss the final, you were key tonight’. He just looked right through me! But I meant every word. Keane, for me, was immense, the way Steven Gerrard was for Liverpool, the way Henderson is now.”

Administrators did not always take kindly to Green’s occasionally withering verdicts.

“One of the difficulties I had with Richard Scudamore was that I was strong on my opinions on the Premier League. We are the most-watched league in the world, for good reasons, we are a great watch but it doesn’t make the football always the best. Scudamore made it known to me that he didn’t like that. He thought I should be more involved in ‘selling’ the Premier League. The Premier League is outstanding but that doesn’t mean it’s faultless. That’s my commentary style: if something’s wrong, I’ll call it’s ‘wrong’ but when it’s good I’ll make sure I’m screaming to the skies that it is bloody good.”

He thinks, too, of those he has worked with like the late Peter Jones, “so helpful” and Jimmy Armfield, whose “death hit me hard. He was like a broadcasting father to me and Mike.”

The Mike to whom he refers is Mike Ingham, who he worked with for years, sharing commentaries. Ingham has now retired to the West Country and has written a book.

“A couple of months back, the Daily Mail ran a story about Mike’s forthcoming book, and made the point that he didn’t mention me once in the book, and what’s the story behind that? The truth is I don’t know. Yes, it did hurt me.”

In essence, Ingham was urbane, Green occasionally prickly, yet they blended into a magnificent broadcasting double act.

“I swear hand on heart, I’ve never done anything against Mike,” Green adds. “It’s very sad. We were so close. Think of all the times we shared. The only Alan Green mentioned in the book is the former Coventry player! I can’t imagine it was deliberate. Mike surely wasn’t like that. I hope not. Mike was a constant theme throughout my book.

“Mike retired at the World Cup final in Rio in 2014 and there was a blaze of publicity for that, and Mike deserved it. I remember during the commentary when I handed over to him, and saying not only how much I had appreciated his friendship and being a work colleague, I said he’s been like my brother for all these years. I can’t say anything more to show how much I appreciate Mike. I am not in touch with him. It’s a delicate subject.”
 

Davìd Moyéz

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Grew up without a TV so watching a game was a rare treat for me. Had to listen to most games and could never understood why this bloke seemed so miserable to be paid to watch football. A much loathed figure by my brother's and I.
 
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Fitchett

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Good riddance - easily the worst football commentator, which is quite an achievement with the number of ABU's around.
 

V.O.

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“With Allardyce, I just didn’t like the style of football his teams tended to play. I do remember going up to him at the end of one season, 2004, when Sam was out working [at the European Championship in Portugal], and I was staying at same hotel. I said, ‘I can’t speak highly enough of how well you have done this season when Bolton finished eighth.’ I put my hand out, and he turned away."
 

rotherham_red

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How he was still in a job after racially abusing Eric Djemba-Djemba on air, I will never know
 

Buster15

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100 percent agree. Yes he fell out with Fergie however if you take the red tinted glasses off he’s actually very entertaining and has a certain tone to his voice and can manipulate it to build suspense, certainly within a radio setting.

I love him.
Really glad to hear that I am not the only one who enjoys his commentary.
Many others just say that player X passes to player Y.

But with Green, he is extremely good at bringing the game to life.
And yes. If it is a crap game, he says so.
What is so wrong with that.
 

Mr Pigeon

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I don't mind his commentary too much. The rants he went on helped to break up the monotony of "De Gea to Lingard, Lingard to De Gea, Pogba to PSG" that you usually get during radio broadcasts.
 
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Not sure how many people actually listened to the radio.

If you listen to his commentary on the 98/99 champions league final he’s anything but biased.

He’s an outstanding commentator.
It was an English team versus a German team... he's ok (ish) in those type of games.

When it comes to Premier League, he's bitter, hypocritical and biased - his dislike for United is clear.

(Though op suggesting listening to Talksport is a step too far, you may get Adrian Durham :annoyed::nono:)
 

The-Natural

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This is genuinely fantastic news. The man openly hates us.

I totally disagree with your assertion that he brings games to life. He doesn't have a fecking clue about football. The game is either ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT or it is ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE with him.