Watching the Champions League highlights last Wednesday night I was surprised to see former Villa player Steve Hodge trying to summarise and it got me to thinking about how many former Villa players are now working on TV or radio or both.
The ones I could think of easily were Andy Gray, Paul Merson, Gareth Southgate, Andy Townsend, Stan Victor Collymore, Dion Dublin, Alan McInally, Ray Houghton and Tony Cascarino. But if you start to include Channel Five and local radio the list includes Dean Saunders, Ugo Ethiogu, Pat Heard, Colin Gibson and I am sure I saw Dwight Yorke pop up somewhere the other week.
Obviously playing for the Villa makes you the ideal football pundit. This is before we think about managers Ron Atkinson, Brian Little, Martin O’Neill, Graham Taylor and I think John Gregory had a go.
All we need now is for Dr Venglos to pop up on Setanta.
All these Villa media men have got me thinking on two points. Firstly, who is the best former Villa player pundit? Probably has to be ‘Mr. Sky’ himself, Andy Gray but why is he so good?
I enjoy listening to Stan on the radio even if I am not totally convinced that he has always been a Villa fan and I am sure he tries too hard to be controversial sometimes.
Second point was, which of the current players will end-up as pundits? Will Ashley Young end up with his own radio show or maybe Emile Heskey will end up presenting Match of the day. Thinking about it I think the obvious two players would be Reo Coker and Stewart Downing but I think one thing the list I mentioned earlier proves is, it's not always the obvious ones.