Please stop meddling with our favourites

TRYING to conjure up music in the confines of a newspaper page rarely works, so, while I won't try and transcribe the notes of Match of the Day, I expect anyone with an interest in football will know what I’m talking about and be capable of humming it in their heads.

- 

MotD, in shorthand, is something of an institution in this country - one of those things which institutions dare not interfere with too much, lest they be accused of trifling with the stitches which hold together the very fabric of the nation.

It might only be football highlights but woe betide anyone who thinks they can ‘improve’ it by changing the music or tinkering too much with the format.

I remember ITV pulling off the coup of securing the rights to the Saturday night Premier League highlights, only for fans to react with disgust at the prospect of actual adverts between the goalmouth action, and the thought that Andy Townsend's Tactics Truck might be something we had to learn to live with.

Yet bosses, especially at the BBC, just can’t help themselves, and last week the corporation’s chairman, Samir Shah, said that MotD should not revolve around highlights, but focus more on the analysis to give fans a ‘deeper insight’