Sky Sports pundits face the media: ‘We’re better than BT Sport’

Sitting side by side on high stools in the Monday Night Football studio in front of an invited audience fielding questions from the presenter Dave Jones, the pundits Roy Keane, Micah Richards, Jamie Carragher and Gary Neville do not so much resemble a crack team of in-house analysts assembled to publicise Sky Sports’ coverage of the imminent Premier League season as a has-been boy band announcing a comeback tour prompted by multiple mid-life crises or a large bill from HMRC.

With Kelly Cates, Emma Saunders and the Guardian columnist Karen Carney unavailable due to prior engagements, the empty stool at one end is reserved for one of the original Spice Boys, Jamie Redknapp, who is running late in a state of affairs unlikely to please his bearded Irish bandmate. To be fair, Keane seems in good spirits and is looking fit, tanned and extremely lean.

Indeed, so jovial does he appear to be, that when questions are opened to the floor it seems as good a time as any to inquire whether his well-documented, violent, on-field “previous” with Alfie Haaland could in any way cloud his judgment when at some point in the very near future he is called upon to lavish praise or criticism on Erling, the former Manchester City midfielder’s son. As that famous tackle on Haaland the elder demonstrated, Keane is after all a man who clearly knows how to hold a grudge.

During a previous group discussion on City’s new star signing, Keane had remained silent as his colleagues took turns debating the pros and precious few cons of the club’s decision to sign the superstar striker from Borussia Dortmund but he was quick, at first with a conspicuous narrowing of the eyes, to rubbish the notion that he might be anything other than scrupulously fair in