Football Fans Will Soon Find A Way To Moan About Peter Drury’s Commentary

With Martin Tyler’s 33-year stint coming to a close as Sky Sports’ lead commentator, there are undoubtedly a huge pair of shoes to fill on the TV gantry. Forget the last few years when almost every person on Twitter has called for the veteran to be taken off air, remember the incredible moments he gave us such as the Aguero moment or the “Collymore closing in” line.

Tyler has been the voice of the Premier League for generations of football fans and his legacy will be up there with the likes of Barry Davies and the late John Motson. Social media has been calling for Sky to replace Tyler with Peter Drury and those fans have got their wish, with the broadcaster having announced the CBS star will be leading their commentary team from next season.

Drury has been a renowned poet on air in recent years, with his Greek god in Rome analogy for Kostas Manolas’ goal which sent Roma through to the Champions League semi-finals against Barcelona being iconic in itself.

The 55-year-old has always left a good impression on football fans in the UK on the occasions when his voice has been heard. Most of our experience of him being the guiding voice of football has been on BT Sport for the Champions League coverage, as well as various international matches across major tournaments with ITV before that.

Fans are looking forward to what Drury can bring to Sky with his creativity with words, and they’ll be hoping he can instil some life back into matches from the gantry. There is no one better than Drury right now to succeed Tyler because he has a wealth of experience covering the game’s biggest matches.

However, viewers in the UK regard Drury in such high regard because they have dealt with him in small doses until now, and there is inevitably a big risk with this added exposure. The poetic analogies they love right now could easily become irritating in the near future with Drury on commentary more frequently. Tyler was the voice of the Premier League but we saw how viewers turned on him in the last few seasons, constantly picking and moaning at his supposedly monotone dialogue.

Once the fascination of Drury’s delivery stops, it won’t be long before the Twitterati are actively claiming him to be repetitive and one dimensional. That is just the way the fickleness of football supporters works, it happens with their clubs and it also happens with the TV companies.

They used to love tuning into games that were being described by Tyler and towards the end they were left frustrated when he was in the commentary box for the biggest clashes. This will likely happen to Drury, unless he learns from what happened to his predecessor and works on a way to freshen up his coverage.

That, unfortunately, is just the way of things in modern football.