whoever it is it will be a box ticking exercise, nothing to do with them being any good at the job, they might bin it altogether though (rarely watched it, after I discovered streaming 3pms, back in the days of Tommo etc), did start to watch the pre-game but with the new lot but quickly dropped out and have not been back since!
What used to make it so watchable was the individuals appeared to have a long-standing affiliation to a team, Tommo - us, Charlie Nicholas - Arsenal etc so they would rib each other if their favourite was losing etc, then the cries of "GOOOOAAAAALLLLL" when Stelling was in the middle of a link and so on.
You can't replicate the rapport the panel built up over the years, you can replace them one by one maybe but they got rid of three of their core panel in one hit and took away a lot of what the programme was originally representing, i.e. a group of pals talking about footie in the pub and turned it into a politically correct load of mesh.
Why when there are already replica programmes like Final Score and the BT version do that as is beyond me.
My guess is they'll cull it at the end of the season and have phoenix replacement starting next year
