Manchester United icon Wayne Rooney has secured new back-up job if management career fails

Pay your TV football subscription for access to live games broadcast at unsuitable kick-off times, insufferable Gillette adverts and pundits telling you nothing you couldn’t see yourself.

We’re now used to the first, will hopefully soon see the back of the second but will all have to continue to endure the third. It was never supposed to be this way.

It’s been forgotten why punditry was introduced in the first place and why viewers once stuck around to listen to what was said. Authoritative figures in the game gave insight into tactics, play patterns and thought processes that the common viewer would not have otherwise known.

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Maybe there is only so much that can be said, especially with the amount of games on TV today, but match analysis has now turned into a soapbox for relevance and profile-boosting, rather than a medium for unknown detail for the viewer.

Post-match reaction has become more akin to a podcast chat, so much so that Sky Sports briefly released these clips as audio episodes at one point. Perhaps that is just the world we are now living in, but content is nothing without substance.

The truth is punditry is an art and a skill. Too often, former players fail to provide insight and resort to merely giving their own opinion blanketed by an outrageous remark or dry banter, which, quite frankly, anyone with a microphone can do.

Only a few pundits break that mould and Wayne Rooney might just be one of them. After Manchester United’s 1-0 defeat to Arsenal, he indicated he had intel that some injured United players could have in fact participated.

"Some of them injured players can play 100 per cent,” he said. "I have seen it myself over the years, I just think the players who have been injured, they are not filling themselves with any credit at the minute and the manager is going to take all the stick for it."

Rooney went on to give other finer details during his appearance on Sky Sports that could only be given by a former pro who was at the peak of the game. Yes, his stature gives his comment more weight but by drawing his own experience and relating it to what the viewer has just seen, he becomes a must-listen.

It’s an act he has perhaps fine-tuned when coaching players as a manager, and it’s worth underlining that he himself only came out of the game in January amid his dismissal at Birmingham City. So he is ‘fresh’, so to speak - unlike a lot of current analysts.

So bland has the coverage been from others - some of whom won Champions League and Premier League titles - that often journalists have provided more excitement. Italian correspondent James Horncastle was roundly praised for his analysis of Atalanta live on TNT Sports after their 3-0 win over Liverpool.

New York Times writer Rory Smith is a popular regular on BBC Radio show ‘The Monday Night Club’ and French columnist Julien Laurens, for various outlets, sheds light on stories on the continent that your Jamie Redknapps and Jermaine Beckfords never could.

Of course, this a journalist praising other journalists - but the point is, ex-footballers are infinitely better placed than writers to offer their thoughts, but are largely failing.

For all their criticisms, Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher lead the way for the ex-footballer contingent and Rooney could join them. As he flirts with celebrity boxing and waits for a return to management, Rooney is due to appear on the Stick to Football podcast alongside the aforementioned duo.

Questions will linger over his coaching future after a frustrating spell at Derby, a brief one at DC United and a poor one at Birmingham.

But if the management career burns out, punditry may be an alternative venture that Rooney could easily thrive in after being box office on Sunday and having an impressive stint with the BBC during the FA Cup semi-final.