Is Setanta a kiss of death to a match?

It's sometimes mean to pick on the new boy before he gets into his stride. But sometimes it's essential. And I feel that Setanta, the sports TV channel falls into that category.

This isn't going to be some rant about inferior graphic, inferior commentary or inferior presenters when compared to Sky because none of the above are quite true. And when you compare it to, say, ITV covering the Premiership, the Irish TV station does work out to be the lesser of two evils.

But I'm beginning to think that they've either been stitched up by Sky over the games they get or they are becoming a kiss of death on many of the games they get to cover.

Consider the evidence: Put aside a couple of crackers, such as the 3-3 between Fulham and Manchester City and the 4-4 between Tottenham and Aston Villa and what are you left with?

Portsmouth 0, West Ham 0. Blackburn 0, Liverpool 0. Birmingham 0, Manchester United 1.

Lets go through them one by one. Portsmouth have the league's top scorer, Benjani, and West Ham don't have the tighest defence around. They also have some good strikers, but it's a bore draw.

Blackburn Rovers have some of the best strikers around who didn't cost more than £7 million - Santa Cruz and Benni McCarthy. Liverpool have a string of strikers who did cost more than £7million. And the score was still 0, 0.

Birmingham City have a team more prone to leaving a goal wide open than Liverpool's Capital of Culture Company. Manchester United have scorers throughout the pitch, boast a great range of strikers. And Cristiano Ronaldo. And they only beat Blues by a single goal?

When the Red Devils (!) faced Sunderland, a team doing much better than expected it has to be said but still no rivals to Sir Alex's team, they still only won 1-0. And Chelsea v Blackburn ended up 0-0.

On paper, there should have been loadsa goals in these games. Is it too early to start talking about a Setanta curse? Or is it just because they've not had many Arsenal games? Or is it, because, like most other normal football fans, footballers and managers don't really want to be playing football at 5.15pm on a Saturday tea-time?

Manchester City v Sunderland (Setanta, 8pm).

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