THE CRITICS TELEVISION

Sport on TV

THE Broadcasting Standards Council upheld complaints over Channel 4's repeating of a fly- on-the-wall documentary, Graham Taylor - The Impossible Job, about the former England football manager, in which he used the word 'fuck' 38 times.

CHANNEL 4 faced criticism from the Broadcasting Standards Council yesterday for repeating a fly-on-the-wall documentary about Graham Taylor, the former England football manager, in which he used the word 'fuck' 38 times.

TO PARAPHRASE Damon Runyon's paraphrasing of the Bible, the race is not always to the physically strong and the fiscally rich (to whit, Derby County). But it's a safe way to bet (Blackburn Rovers). Which is why Wolverhampton Wanderers have been installed as favourites for promotion to the Premiership from the Endsleigh League First Division.

What is it about The World at One that has made you a permanent feature of that tendentious programme?

(First Edition)

FOR A variety of reasons, the stunning ineptitude of his predecessor being the most compelling of them, nobody is expecting miracles from Terry Venables. As the Venables era begins, England expects nothing more than a team that is coherent, coached by a man who can speak the Queen's English for purposes other than self-justification. Of course, expectations will soon be revised, upwards, but for now most in the game and on its critical fringe seem content, even a shade optimistic, that the identity crisis which has long afflicted the England team is about to be no more.

TERRY VENABLES had just returned from watching Paul Gascoigne play in Italy. The plane had been half full of pressmen assigned to watch his every move - Venables', not Gascoigne's. No problem. Having run a club called Scribes, he already had a lot of them on his side. He reckons he understands the press and he was not a bit taken in when someone complimented him on his good public relations. 'That's easy when you 'aven't played your first match. ' Pragmatism and dropped H's reminiscent of Sir Alf Ramsey himself.

IN THE staffroom of St Ann's primary school, Tottenham, north London, Graham Taylor, a maths specialist, is showing fellow teachers some workbooks chosen from his class of nine-year-olds. Can anyone guess, he asks, which child had most teacher-time in maths and which had least? The reply is unanimous.

Sir: The horror of Monday night's Cutting Edge documentary on the last 18 months of Graham Taylor's reign lay not so much in his liberal use of the F-word but in the portrayal of a management team driven by sentimentality and self-pity while lacking any sign of intellectual rigour or common sense. The conversations between Taylor, his players and his management team reeked of nothing more elevated than the squabbling and chivvying of a group of 14-year- olds in a school playground.

IN THE week a new England football manager was finally appointed, the former incumbent appeared on national television in his pyjamas. There were many scenes in 'An Impossible Job' which might have served as chilling premonitions for Terry Venables, but none more so than the one shot early in the morning in Graham Taylor's Dutch hotel room. This, Mr Venables, is the way it goes, for England managers. You start out in your overcoat at a press reception on the Wembley pitch, waving warmly to the cameras of The Nine O'Clock News. But you end up clad in a set of British Home Stores' nylon best, cleaning your teeth in a Channel 4 documentary.

JUST how does the Football Association go about finding a new manager for the England team? Well, like most of the best things in the tradition of football, the business tends to takes place very informally . . .

EVEN the most forbearing of critics can be goaded into protest by television's incessant reiteration of the gospel that sport should be laid bare.