Simon Thomas begins impossible task of replacing the irreplaceable Jeff Stelling

The Emperor Tiberius, unworthy successor to Augustus. Queen + Adam Lambert. Andrew Johnson assuming the presidency after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Ronnie Irani, England’s New Botham. Moyesie. All men who took up the mantle of an all-time great, and all men who found it hard going, condemned to be compared unfavourably to the man they had replaced. And not one of them had to drag some sense out of dear old Paul Merson.

Simon Thomas, who replaced Jeff Stelling as the host of Soccer Saturday at the weekend, is unlikely to alienate the Roman senate en route to sequestering himself in depravity in Capri before possibly being murdered by Caligula, or get impeached for agitating the Civil War, or get knocked out of the FA Cup third round by Swansea City, or score 1 and 9 with the bat against New Zealand in his third and final Test match as part of a team performance so dismal that the England captain of the time was booed on the Oval dressing room balcony. But pitfalls of their own kind lie ahead for a presenter who has taken on surely the hardest assignment in British sports broadcasting.

Thomas began his tenure on Saturday by addressing Sky Sports viewers to say: “It is an absolute honour to host this brilliant show. If I can do half the job that the legend Jeff Stelling did over the last 25 years, I will have done something right.”

Half as good would still be damn good and the early signs are that Thomas, an excellent broadcaster and by all accounts a fine chap, will have his work cut out to achieve that mark. And perhaps the programme makers are not making success for their new frontman as attainable as it might be.

Saturday’s season opener saw a change of host, sure, but the selection of expert pundits was unfreshened: Merson, Clinton Morrison, Michael Dawson and the slightly lesser-spotted Neil Lennon, all lingering and lurking like the untouched leavings at a buffet, room temperature coleslaw and curling lettuce, tired now and starting to whiff. On the upside, they were joined by Sue Smith: the woman with the best hair in football had been coaxed out of her Wilmslow stronghold to join The Boys™ in the West London studio rather than contributing as she often does by the wonders of video link. But even still. This squad is in urgent need of a shake-up.

Would the attempt to replace the irreplaceable have been more successful if the show had gone for a new format or at least some new blood? Instead, they changed the host and fiddled with the furniture in what looked like a bit of a token gesture, but everything else stayed the same.

With each pundit installed on a neon blue podium-pulpit thing, looking like a crop of struggling contestants on The Weakest Link, all seemed distant and detached literally as well as metaphorically, meaning that even more of the heavy-lifting for the lengthy scores-and-entertainment afternoon had to be done by the new host.