Barney Francis likes to tell a story about how Gary Neville called the Sky Sports managing director shortly after his retirement from playing.
Having been signed up by the broadcaster, Neville asked Francis for a full size replica of the Sky Sports touchscreen installed in his house during the close season so he could practise his new craft. Thanks to a plain-speaking style and an eye for picking out the sort of details players spot but viewers miss, he soon redefined the art (such as it is) of football punditry and made many of his rivals seem cosy and lazy.
Such was his instant success, it is easy to forget there were many who doubted whether he could put aside his club allegiance or whether those who reviled him in a Manchester United shirt could take him seriously as a pundit.
Instead, he quickly became the benchmark for a new kind of football pundits and, for Sky Sports, provided a perfect break with the era of Richard Keys and Andy Gray.
Some of those who have followed the same path, from Michael Owen to Paul Scholes, have proved it is not as easy as it looks.
“Gary has not only done a superb job with our football but he’s shaken up everything. It’s no longer satisfactory, anywhere, to sit on a chair and say what you saw,” Francis said after Neville had been in his post for two seasons. “Gary very quickly went from being an unpopular figure to someone who people would tune into Monday Night Football to watch, regardless of who was playing.”
Neville’s departure will leave a huge hole for Sky Sports at a time when it is struggling to absorb the costs associated with an 80% hike in the amount it is paying for Premier League football from next season.
Prices for customers have gone up and the budget for other sports rights has been cut as the broadcaster, synonymous with the Premier League age, prepares to pay £4.2bn for 126 matches from next season.
In some ways, Neville’s abrupt departure gives it time to plan for next season. It is understood he will not be immediately replaced and that Jamie Carragher, with whom he has formed a formidable double act on Monday Night Football, will be paired instead with a rolling cast of partners.
They might include existing Sky talent including Thierry Henry, who had a mixed start following his big money arrival on the punditry sofa and will now be further exposed, or one-off guests. The likes of Roberto Martinez, Howard Webb and Frank Lampard have already appeared as guests on the programme this season.
For Francis, who said the door was always open for Neville’s return, the timing may have been a shock but he must have suspected it was coming. Neville has repeatedly hinted he would give up on his dual existence as a coach and pundit, which has not been without its occasional challenge, by the summer and plump for one or the other.
With his eyes perhaps ultimately set on the England job, he has followed the advice of Roy Hodgson who last year said he should prioritise trying to influence events on the field over talking about them.
“Sky has probably been one of the best decisions I have ever made, simply an incredible job that I have loved doing,” Neville said. “The team I have worked with on match days and MNF have been simply unbelievable, their knowledge of the game, their passion, their work ethos has made me love football more.”
But for Sky Sports, and many of its viewers, he will leave behind a Skypad shaped hole.
