Twenty-five years ago the station unleashed a new age – and Richard Keys – on the nation but it may now be time for some fresh thinking about football TV

A quarter of a century has passed since ITV offered the new-fangled Premier League an outlandish £262m for the rights to continue producing Elton Welsby vehicle The Match. At which point agitated Spurs owner and set-top-box mogul Alan Sugar nipped out of the negotiating room, bellowed “Blow them aht the water!” into a nearby payphone, a Sky apparatchik appeared in a puff of smoke carrying an extra £42m, and Super Sunday became a thing. All together now: “Here we go! Hee-ee-eere we go! Here we go, here we go, here we go, here we go, this is it!”

I was there at the birth of Sky Sports – and what a kerfuffle | David James Read more

OK, so Stephen Sondheim wasn’t available to do the lyrics. But in retrospect, that theme tune wasn’t too bad, was it? Preposterously pompous, yes, and those pounding drums at the end took longer to fade away than Hey Jude. But it got the blood pumping, whipping up anticipation of good times ahead. At which point Richard Keys would prick the bubble, informing us that we’d be in his company for a whole two hours before kick-off. Nothing personal, Richard, we just weren’t used to it. Elton had the 1989 title decider between Liverpool and Arsenal up and running within 13 minutes.

In his introduction to the very first live Premier League transmission, contested in the knowing post-modern style by Football League tribute acts Nottingham Forest and Liverpool, Keys described the host city as being blessed with “a sporting tradition stretching all the way back to Robin Hood”. A hot-topic archery joke there, Great Britain having won a couple of bronze medals in the posh darts at the Barcelona Olympics a fortnight earlier. Teddy Sheringham’s super screamer settled an otherwise soporific Sabbath, and, well, there’s always Monday Night Football to look forward to, isn’t there?

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Teddy Sheringham scores the first goal on Sky, getting Nottingham Forest’s winner in the 1-0 victory over Liverpool at the City Ground on 16 August 1992. Photograph: Colorsport/Rex/Shutterstock

Keys guided us through that particular epoch by claiming “start-of-the-week depression” was a thing of the past. Monday was now officially “part of the weekend”, a time for “a few smiles” and some “family fun”. That wholesome entertainment included the unveiling of the Sky Strikers dancing troupe ahead of Manchester City versus Queens Park Rangers. The women cavorted to order before Niall Quinn, Ian Holloway and co did their little turn. The presenter promised “more formal introductions a little later in the programme”. Idle late‑in‑the-evening banter between Keys and 14 women in cheerleading skirts? Good luck getting that segment off the drawing board in 2017.

To be scrupulously fair to Keys, the man knew how to conduct an interview. The most famous post‑match footage of all time was the result of one simple interjection, exquisitely timed and perfectly pitched. “That’s part and parcel of the psychological battle isn’t it, Kevin?” The nuclear codes in chat form, right there. Love it.

A decade on, Sir Alex Ferguson took the eternal dialectic between artist and critic up a notch, dismissing the garden-variety probing of Geoff Shreeves as “absolute bollocks”. Shreeves had the unenviable task of nervously ordering Fergie to tone it down on the basis that kids might be watching. Any kids watching were, of course, rolling around on the carpet in front of the telly, holding their sides, unable to breathe.

The most bravura performance was given in late 2015 by Chelsea manager José Mourinho after his misfiring champions lost at home to Southampton. Responding to the staple question of the tired interviewer who just wants to get home for his tea – “What did you make of that?” – Mourinho launched into a seven‑minute Shakespearian soliloquy. “I don’t run away ... if the club wants to sack me, they have to sack me ... I want to carry on, no doubt, no doubt.” A passionate defence of his position, which no one had previously questioned, containing enough ambiguous motivation to make Iago sound like Cillit Bang’s Barry Scott. At least Keegan required a little prodding.

The Sky studio is now the domain of Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher, whose whip-smart analysis and righteous rants have made the Monday night show depression-lifting telly at long last, even if the Lancastrian rivals shtick is trotted out to a degree that Frank Randle might have found a tad too parochial.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Sky Strikers strut their stuff at Highbury for Arsenal’s 2-0 win over Oldham in 1992. Photograph: Colorsport/Rex/Shutterstock

Contemporary dance at Maine Road, the interview as psychodrama, green tactics tables, half-cut hacks shouting at each other across a table in a darkened room ... for all its faults, Sky kept pushing the envelope during the first quarter-century. But the rate of innovation has understandably slowed up. Perhaps it’s time for the new kids at BT Sport to shoulder some of the load? Its only notable contribution to date has been to fill the commentary box to bursting point, so much so that when the gantry door is opened, Darren Fletcher, Glenn Hoddle, Steve McManaman, Michael Owen and Howard Webb spill out in homage to the cabin scene from the Marx Brothers’ A Night at the Opera.

But we cut Sky enough slack. Give it another 25 years, and BT is statistically likely to come up with a few smart suggestions over the piece, too. Perhaps it could begin with one analyst interjecting with a single observation every 30 minutes or so, and only then if there’s actually something to say, much like Kenneth Wolstenholme’s sporadic sidekick Walley Barnes used to do on the BBC back in the 60s. Fashion is cyclical, everything comes back around eventually, and they can have that idea for free.