ITV Sport: EFL Highlights

The revamp for EFL season 2023-24 is a significant improvement on the previous season. The rotation of clubs for the lead game is retained and allows extended post game interviews with team managers. This also provides a platform for club or supporter initatives which should be applauded.

The remainder of the show is purely focussed on the action rather than previous repetition with inane ex player comments which offered very little insight.

Credit to the presentation team for their introductions which are aided by fan pre-game excitement.

Clearly the commentators like to run with their fair share of puns and aliteration.

In this context Sue Thearle you are the best at not letting a theme run away from you.

Same dull formula of showing about 45 seconds of each match, with awful cringeworthy pun-laden "commentary", followed by waffling about nothing for 5 minutes then going for an advert break. Only much much worse, with the dullest most humourless presenters and "pundits" they could possibly find.

Colin Murray and the rest did their best to make a poor product watchable on Quest, ITV have just gone down the "make it as boring as humanly possible" route. And the dreadful saxomophone theme tune can get right in the bin.

How little effort goes into these shows is incredible. You could improve it ten-fold, just by hiring Roland Rat to present it and have Chris Wilder lying on a sofa drinking a pina colada in his beach-ready budgie smugglers and flip-flops.

ITV have very quickly found the same problem that Quest had before them - how do you show three leagues worth of highlights in a quick and snazzy package that doesn't feel laboured or short-change fans?

Early indication is that they will deal with this slightly better than the previous incarnation, but it still remains rather dry.