Football Focus should have been reimagined and moved to Friday evening

BBC announced on Thursday that "Following extensive consideration, BBC Sport has decided to say goodbye to Football Focus at the end of this season.

First broadcast in 1974, Football Focus is a testament to the brilliant teams who have worked on it over the years and, of course, the audience. The programme has been a staple of the BBC’s football coverage for decades, providing fans with interviews, analysis and stories from across the game ahead of the weekend’s fixtures. But changing audience behaviours mean fans are now increasingly consuming football content in different ways and it is appropriate to respond to this as difficult decisions are made around how the licence fee is spent.

Fans are accessing discussion, highlights, analysis and news through digital platforms and on-demand viewing and as viewing habits continue to evolve, BBC Sport is adapting how it brings football coverage to the widest audiences across television, radio, online and to its extensive social platforms."

Mainstream Broadcast networks now use the change in viewing habits and audience behaviours as an easy way to just be lazy and not think outside the box. Football Focus could have a different place, be a reimagined show and be at a different time, setting the scene for the weekend ahead. BBC likes to claim poverty, and likes to act as though the big bad pay channels came along and stole all their football coverage, when nothing could be further from the truth.

This weekend across BBC Scotland, BBC Alba, BBC iPlayer, BBC One and BBC Two the BBC will broadcast no fewer than SIX Live matches from the FA Cup, UEFA Women's Champions League, Serie A, Scottish Championship, Scottish Women's Premier League and the Bundesliga. Football Focus may have been broadcasting for 52 years, but for the last 19 years it has been in the wrong place on the schedule. With the demise of Grandstand in 2007 the BBC should have repositioned the show and made it more attractive to football fans who would not have had competition for their eyes at that time.

Saturday lunch time games have occurred for many decades, but they have become an integral part of the Premier League TV deal since the late 1990's, meaning that Football Focus was being shown when some of the biggest games in the country are being played. Instead of discontinuing the show the BBC should without doubt have reimagined it and moved to it Friday evening on BBC Two, running from 6pm to 7.30pm, a 90-minute show for a 90-minute game.

The show would, tonight, run in to THREE Live games, and would set the scene for a spectacular weekend of football across the country and on the BBC.

This weekend shows why moving the show to a Friday evening slot would have worked perfectly, with Football Focus being able to preview the following:

• Friday night Premier League game between Europe Chasing Sunderland and relegation fighting Nottingham Forest, which kicks off at 8pm

• Friday night Scottish Championship game between St Johnstone and Raith Rovers, which kicks off at 7.45pm and is Live on BBC Scotland and online from 7.30pm

• Friday night Bundesliga game between RB Leipzig and Union Berlin, which kicks off at 7.30pm and is Live on BBC iPlayer and BBC Sport website from 7.20pm

• Friday night Scottish Women's Premier League game between Partick Thistle and Glasgow City, which is Live on BBC Alba from 7.25pm

• FA Cup Semi-Finals on Saturday and Sunday, including Manchester City v Southampton which is Live on BBC One from 4.45pm on Saturday

• UEFA Women's Champions League Semi-Finals 1st Legs, including Arsenal v Lyon, which is Live on BBC Two from 3pm on Sunday

• Serie A game between Torino and Inter Milan, and if Inter win they are Champions of Serie A, which is Live on BBC Alba from 4.50pm on Sunday

• 5 crucial Premier League games on Saturday impacting the race for the title, the race for Europe and the fight for survival, with games kicking off at 12.30pm, 3pm and 5.30pm

• 3 huge games in the Scottish Premiership title race including the Edinburgh Derby on Sunday

• A potentially season-defining game between Brighton and Manchester City in the WSL on Saturday

• The penultimate round of fixtures in the Championship, League One and League Two

• Major news items they could have covered include the UEFA Ban on Gianluca Prestianni for homophobic abuse during the UEFA Champions League game between Benfica and Real Madrid, and the EFL decision which sees West Brom docked two points for financial breaches

Football Focus should focus on more than just English football, specifically the Premier League. It should cover the leagues of the English Football Pyramid, but also the Scottish game, European football and world game too. The show could also have a live studio audience of fans from each of the 92 EFL and Premier League clubs, each of the clubs in the SPFL and fans of other clubs across Women's Football and the game across the world. The show could be interactive, not just with the studio audience but also with the viewer at home, who could vote on topical questions, VAR incidents and much more.

Yet again BBC have chosen the easy way out, ending an iconic show rather than reinventing it and updating it to make it fit for 2026.

GRNDSTND, by Matt Hooper