Pete Barrow: Just enjoy the psycho Babble

THE most entertaining pundit of the Euro 2012 championships so far has to be Phil Babb.

The former Bradford City, Coventry City and Liverpool defender has been taken on board by Sky Sports to give his run down on the Republic of Ireland – for whom he won 35 caps despite being born in Lambeth – and their progress in the competition.

To be fair to Babb he does try to have a different take on things than most pundits, but he does get wonderfully tongue-tied in the process.

In summing up the 3-1 defeat suffered by the Irish at the hands of Croatia he attempted to describe Slaven Bilic’s team as being more clever than their rivals but skated through a word that started out as “clevererer” and seemed to end up as “cleveriest”.

He then found tautological nirvana as he said ‘to try and coin a cliche, football is a funny old game’, and then got lost as to whether he was referring to Spain, Italy or Ireland.

All endearingly done in an effort to be different – far better to fluff in trying than be as boring as the BBC.