I don't have any subscriptions to streaming sports providers, so must content myself with the truncated highlights that are provided by some of these companies on YouTube. Watching 6 or 7 minutes of a 100 minute Premier League game hardly gives you more than a taste of the action. Even then, it's just the goals, goal-mouth action or any controversies that emerged, such as a sending off. You miss the flow and flavour of the game, so when pundits later provide their considered opinions of the very same game, it can seem like you haven't watched anything at all.

I suppose that I should be content that I can watch the brief bits and pieces that I do at all. Before the advent of the kind of services provided courtesy of the internet, the best one could hope for was packaged weekly shows on TV. You were beholden to whatever the content was that was chosen for you. Yet I still have fond memories of 'Match of the Day' and the other programs that brought the beautiful game into my living room.

Of course, we are spoilt for choice and there does remain a universe in which one day I am able to cull the providers I don't watch (but other family members do) and choose one that let's me watch whole football games from the UK. Maybe that day will come and maybe it won't but until then, it will simply be the scraps that fall from the table.