Liam Rosenior and Keith Andrews, the punditry years: ‘They were hypnotised’

If you were looking for a manager to challenge for the Champions League places, Sky Sports’ coverage of the English Football League might not be the first place you would look.

But if you were looking during their broadcast of Norwich City vs Blackburn Rovers in April 2019, that’s exactly where you’d find a couple of them.

Back then, Liam Rosenior and Keith Andrews were humble TV pundits, relatively fresh from their playing days, drawing on their experience of 25 combined seasons in the EFL — the three-division structure immediately below the Premier League made up of the Championship (second tier), League One (third) and League Two (fourth).

Now, they are in charge of top-flight sides Chelsea and Brentford respectively, and face each other at Stamford Bridge this weekend, two points apart in the Premier League table as they grapple for a spot in next season’s Champions League.

In some respects, this is essentially the old Paul Rudd meme made flesh, two slightly disbelieving souls saying, “Look at us! Who would’ve thought? Not me!” to each other. But to those who worked with them on those Sky shows, it might be a surprise that it’s happened so soon, but it’s not that they have made it to these positions.

The two were already coaching then — Rosenior with the Brighton youth teams, Andrews at EFL club Milton Keynes Dons and then with the Republic of Ireland Under-21s and later senior sides — but was it clear at that point that both would be managers, as opposed to ‘just’ coaches?

“The quick, easy answer is: yes,” says Jobi McAnuff, a fellow EFL pundit who shared screen time with each of them. “Both had that as the goal and ambition — to be the No 1. Keith’s opportunity probably came a bit sooner than he thought, in the Premier League at least, but Brentford have chosen their coaching positions really well. They’ve made very deliberate choices about what would be best for them and put them in the best position.”

The pair were brought in to freshen up Sky’s EFL coverage in 2016 and 2017.

Andrews arrived on the sofa after impressing in an appearance on highlights show Goals On Sunday, having been recruited by its presenter Chris Kamara. Rosenior’s name came up when Sky were talking to Brighton, where he was still a player (though he had already completed his coaching badges), about some other interviews. He was so good in his early TV appearances that producers would jokingly urge him to retire from playing so he was available more often, and he became a regular in the 2017-18 season.

The fact that they were both already coaching was a significant factor in Sky’s eagerness to have them on, as the idea was that they were already actively thinking about the game analytically and would hopefully provide something more than the cliched ‘He’ll be disappointed with that, Clive’-style punditry by numbers.

“Coaching gives you a different outlook on the game completely,” says McAnuff, who is a coach himself. “You see much more detail, and you more easily understand what has happened during a game. As a fan, you might see that a particular player has had a lot of the ball, but you might not see whether that has been manufactured or if it has been worked on.

“The task (as a pundit) is maybe not getting into too much detail when you’re trying to relay that to people at home: it’s about trying to tell people why something has happened in a way people can understand.”

“What I found with those two was that they were absolutely fascinated by what was going on,” says David Prutton, the former Southampton and Nottingham Forest midfielder who now presents Sky’s EFL coverage, “and almost… hypnotised by what they were watching. You could see the (mental) cogs whirring around as they were trying to break down what they were seeing, which I found fascinating.”

They clearly impressed their fellow pundits, too. Darren Bent, another who worked with both men, said on talkSPORT radio recently: “These guys, when I’d sit down and have a conversation with them about the way certain teams play and the way they talk about tactics… I promise you, it’d blow your mind.”

Both Andrews and Rosenior come across as having relatively similar personalities: obviously very smart, fairly calm and understated characters who probably aren’t your men if you want piping-hot takes to clip up for social media posts. “It’s probably the composure you notice most with them,” says Prutton.

“They’re both very measured,” adds McAnuff. “It’s an industry where over-the-top comments are all too often the way people go, but those two had a very keen eye on the coaching side of things, and were looking from that perspective.”

Andrews and Rosenior actually only appeared together on screen a handful of times, broadly because they were considered the best pundits on Sky’s EFL roster, able to pretty much take care of punditry duties on their own, so their appearances were spread out. As such, they only tended to be paired up for the biggest fixtures, such as Frank Lampard’s first game as a manager with Derby County on the opening day of the 2018-19 season, or the promotion play-offs’ semi-finals and finals.

One of the other pundits favoured by Sky around this time was Gary O’Neil, who also fits in this story, having been appointed as Rosenior’s replacement at Strasbourg and, if we’re following all this to its natural conclusion, the next cursed soul in line for the Chelsea gig.

There is a joke to be made somewhere here about Sky’s EFL sofa being the best place to go if you want a management job, but clubs do genuinely pay attention to these things: Rosenior’s television appearances were admired by Derby’s owner at the time Mel Morris, and were a factor in him being recruited to their coaching staff in 2019.

It’s not lost on those who appear on TV that potential employers are watching.

Significantly, both cut their teeth on EFL coverage, which, in many respects, is a more difficult gig than games in bigger competitions that attract more neutral viewers.

Occasionally, you will hear stories of pundits rocking up to a TV or radio studio for a Premier League fixture with barely any preparation and essentially trying to coast through with the knowledge they’ve almost passively gleaned. You can’t get away with winging it in the EFL world, where information is less accessible, and a higher proportion of the audience is likely to be more invested: the chances are that a good chunk of the people who watch Bristol City vs Preston North End will be Bristol City or Preston North End fans.

The flip side is that it’s more difficult to come up with original points for a higher-profile match, but the point is that for Rosenior and Andrews to have excelled in EFL punditry, they will have needed to do their research.

There’s clearly a huge difference between punditry and coaching, but there are some transferable skills. Communication, for example: both jobs essentially rely on the person involved getting their ideas over clearly, concisely and quickly. “If you can put your points across in an engaging way, that’s what makes you sit up and notice,” says Prutton.

“The biggest challenge we have (on TV) is the time,” says McAnuff. “We might do a show with an hour’s build-up, but the actual sections are three minutes here, four minutes there. I’ve heard Liam talking about his (team) meetings, trying to get your point across because of the attention spans of players. There will be crossovers.”

Who knows whether Rosenior will succeed at Chelsea, or whether Brentford’s good start under Andrews will continue beyond this current brilliant run. But considering where both men started, it’s remarkable that they are there.

Managers come from the most unexpected places.

Maybe we should keep a closer eye on the Sky Sports EFL sofa in the future.

Click here to read article