A new season, a new lineup of panellists on Soccer Saturday.
After the show underwent a summer revamp following Sky's decision not to renew the contracts of Matt Le Tissier, Charlie Nicholas and Phil Thompson, there's a brand new look to today's proceedings with Tim Sherwood and Tony Pulis providing their expertise alongside Clinton Morrison, Glen Johnson, and show regular, Paul Merson.
Merson remains on the panel alongside Sue Smith, while Chris Kamara continues to be the roving reporter on games.
Opening the show, Stelling joked: "The Premier League is back, the Football League is back, Soccer Saturday is back, Merse is back but not everyone is back... The fans are not back."
The pause was noticeable.
After introducing the new panel, those watching at home were quick to note the obvious intention of Stelling's remark.
Could Jeff Stelling have made that any more obvious and awkward that his mates aren’t on Soccer Saturday now 😂
— Sam Jones (@SamJonesJourno) September 12, 2020
In terms of the changes that were made, during a recent interview with The Guardian, the TV host did say that he briefly thought about resigning but is more than happy to continue.
"I don’t feel ready to retire, but do I want to start all over again with a diminished product? So I did think about [resigning] but all three urged me not to do anything silly. I’ve also talked to people at Sky and part of the job is to make sure it’s not a diminished product and it’s fun and lively even in a Carabao Cup week.
We did a show and once we got into the games you can’t help but enjoy it. It was a short show from 2.30pm to 5pm and I got messages from Charlie and Tommo saying: ‘We’re watching. Have a good show, mate, just be professional.’ So that’s what I did last Saturday, that’s what I’ll do this Saturday and we’ll see what happens.”
