What a madcap 90 minutes at The Emirates. And that was just TNT Sports’ coverage between 11am and the supposed kick-off time before the re-branded BT Sport channel had another 30 minutes to fill due to the turnstile glitch.
Cue Rio Ferdinand and Joe Cole being asked by Lynsey Hipgrave about their own experiences of delays. Cole recalled a long hiatus during a Tampa Bay Rowdies match due to a thunder storm. ‘Two and a half hours sitting down,’ he said. ‘I needed a shoe horn to get me out the changing room.’
Ferdinand cited a short delay at a West Ham match way back, due to a floodlight failure, then riffed for minutes on how important timing is to nutrition, specifically that you want to be kicking off precisely three hours after your pre-match meal.