Sky Sports sorry for deadline day chaos – is the game up?

Perhaps it was a problem of their own making, but Sky Sports was yesterday forced to apologise for a series of incidents that blighted its ever-more frenzied TV coverage of transfer deadline day.

With boggle-eyed reporters barking live updates from football grounds around the country and lead studio anchor Jim White working himself up into a state of ecstatic hysteria as news of another loan deal breaks, it is little wonder that the fans also get carried away.

The very nature of the coverage lends itself to pranks and protests with gangs of supporters caught up in the manufactured drama of the occasion and drawn to the bright lights of the TV crews like moths to a flame.

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This year there were several notable interventions:

• TV comedian Simon Brodkin hijacked reporter Gary Cotterill at QPR's Loftus Road ground turning up dressed as character Jason Bent, a Liverpudlian footballer, claiming he had signed for the club. Earlier Cotterill had aped Premier League referees by using a can of vanishing spray to try and keep fans back.

• At Crystal Palace a group of fans armed with fireworks arrived on the scene chanting "we f***ing hate Sky Sports" and carrying a banner which read "Sky Sports – killing our game since 1992". Sky's Kaveh Solhekol had to stop broadcasting in what the Daily Telegraph called "the most serious [incident] of several to mar Sky Sports News HQ's biggest day of the year".
• There were also problems at Arsenal where the Telegraph says reporter Geraint Hughes was forced to leave his post "on the advice of his security detail before continuing his updates on Danny Welbeck's move from Manchester United from inside the Emirates Stadium".
• Alan Irwin, reporting from Everton on a possible loan deal for Man United's Tom Cleverley, had to contend with a fan brandishing a purple sex toy in his face. The supporter was eventually removed by security, but the toy became a Twitter sensation.

• A report from Aston Villa was abruptly curtailed as reporter Mark McAdam had to deal with foul language and the unexpected appearance of a blow-up sex doll.

• Studio hosts were forced to apologise several times for swearing from fans standing behind the roving reporters, and in one case bursting forward to scream into the camera, and there were several complaints to Ofcom.

Although rowdy fans have disrupted Sky's coverage in the past, the Daily Mirror reports that the broadcaster "may be forced into changing its future coverage" after Monday's events.

But Mark Webster of the Daily Mail believes Sky have only themselves to blame for turning deadline day into a circus. "When they saw it was becoming something of a spectacle, quite rightly, they went for it," he writes. But now the reporters have become "static targets for all manner of custard pie attacks".

Things may have gone too far. "It's been a fun ride, Sky Sports News. But perhaps its time to get back to basics?" he says.