Fifa are fond of telling us that football is a family. If so, Mark Lawrenson is the grumpy uncle one was compelled to invite to the gathering. But rather than simply sticking him in a secluded armchair and keeping him quiet with a gob full of Quality Street and cooking brandy, the BBC has let him loose on World Cup television viewers.

Lawro has so far done two matches for BBC TV; reaction has been mixed. Which is to say, some people have hated it, and other people have really hated it. Or that has been the online response, anyway, with social media commentators vying to one-up each other with their spite and rage at his contributions to the France vs Australia and Belgium vs Panama matches.

The charges against him are that he moans, makes bad jokes, offers little in the way of tactical insight and does not display appropriate gratitude for his privileged part-time job. “But I’ve got my bad points as well,” one can imagine the former Liverpool man quipping. In an age where some people want granular analysis of football formations, Lawro is a relic. For him, a Continental will always be looking to go down easily, a Latin is a master of the dark arts, the Germans a well-oiled machine. “Dislocated shoelace,” was his tart assessment of an exaggerated injury in the France match.