SUNSPORT reporter MIKE McGRATH went behind the scenes at BT Sport on Saturday night as they went in pursuit of a third-round giantkilling at Deepdale….
WHEN Arsenal are awful for the first 45 minutes, they get an earful live on TV from one of their greatest goalscorers.
Then a last-gasp Olivier Giroud winner and Ian Wright is celebrating a great escape for the club he loves.
Welcome to the BT studio, where the banter of the dressing room meets live broadcasting.
Stars of the Premier League verbally spar when they meet up.
There are inquests into where it goes wrong, like it did when Arsenal fell behind, then sometimes relief when they turn it around.
Wrighty said: “It’s just a natural reaction. I can’t lie. With Arsenal, it is so ‘in me’. Everyone asks me about Arsenal, Arsenal, Arsenal.
“So the natural reaction is to celebrate when they score.”
Aside from being on the pitch and adding to his 185 Gunners goals, SunSport columnist Wrighty could not get closer to the action than he does as a pundit.
As we speak by the BT Winnebago truck, Preston legend Kevin Davies tries to manoeuvre his car into a space and takes a minute or so before starting his day putting the North End side of the punditry.
Davies said: “That’s why I stayed in the car so long — you know what Wrighty’s like! Full of enthusiasm.
“There are a lot of different opinions in there and it gets a bit heated.
“We want to be out there on the pitch still, which is the worst thing for us, but it’s good to be part of it.”
Production staff whirl around the TV trucks and the ex-pros get their make-up done as they prepare.
Then presenter Jake Humphrey breezes in. He has just been driven from Old Trafford after covering Manchester United’s 4-0 win over Reading in the early kick-off.
Humphrey said: “We ran down Sir Matt Busby Way, past Lou Macari’s Chip Shop and straight into the car.
“I was tempted to get some chips because I’m starving. I’ve not eaten anything.”
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With 18 cameras plus goal-line technology in place at Deepdale, everything is ready to go for a classic FA Cup tie.
The biggest concern for Jake and the team is the fog that is descending on Preston and threatening the visibility.
He said: “I think the fog has lifted a bit . . .
“We filled for four hours at the Canada GP in about 2011, so I have form in that area.”
Senior producer David Moss has form, too, and has the contingency plans all set up in his studio truck.
Moss said: “We've had a thing with fog recently. We thought we might lose a game at Lincoln in round two. We had a replay at Newport where fog threatened to put that one out, too.”
Ref Robert Madley declared the game on and BT started their coverage of the match, with pictures getting sent down to London and fed around the world.
Callum Robinson’s early goal threatened a shock, then Arsenal fought back with Aaron Ramsey’s leveller before Giroud’s late winner.
And in the studio the dressing room atmosphere was led by Wright, who got to work with players he came up against during his glittering career. He said: “It’s the same type of banter. It feels like the dressing room again.
“I was someone Rio Ferdinand used to look up to and when I played against him I was so nasty and said such horrible things to him.
“He hated me. Now we’ve got a nice relationship and I like working with him where he can give a defensive angle and I’ll look at attackers and we can bounce off with our analysis.”
And Wrighty reckons punditry is like a football career in terms of getting better with experience.
He said: “When I first started they just wanted off-the-cuff passion about what was going on, which was OK for the start as I came straight out of entertainment and didn’t do punditry for years.
"I was doing that shiny-floor stuff in TV. They just wanted me to be how my character was.
“If social media was around then I probably would have given up!
“There were complaints about not finishing sentences and what I said but I wanted to be more while keeping the same attitude on the television, just with more depth and insight.
“What would someone learn from the analysis? There is always room for banter but you have to give insight.”
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