Mark Lawrenson claims ‘woke’ BBC axed him for being ’65 and white’

Mark Lawrenson featured on Football Focus for 25 years (Picture: Getty)

Mark Lawrenson has claimed that the ‘woke’ BBC axed him as a football pundit for being a 65-year-old white male.

The Liverpool legend featured on BBC show Football Focus for 25 years with his first appearance on Match of the Day coming even earlier.

Lawrenson, 66, last appeared on Football Focus at the end of the 2021-22 campaign before the BBC went ‘top of the woke league’.

Two years on, Lawrenson has opened up about his exit from the BBC and has slammed the national broadcaster for how he and his fellow pundits were treated.

‘I wasn’t happy with the way they dealt with me, basically,’ Lawrenson told The Ben Heath Podcast. ‘I’d been there nearly 25 years, great, but I was just signing one-year contracts, season to season.’

Lawrenson added that he was ‘really p***ed off’ but ‘kind of knew’ what would happen because he was ’65 and white’.

He then suggested that Steve Wright, Ken Bruce and Sue Barker had been treated similarly and insisted that the BBC was the most woke media outlet in the country.

The BBC have decided not to respond to Mark Lawrenson’s claims (Picture: Getty)

Quizzed about the BBC’s controversial decision to briefly suspend Gary Lineker in 2023 after he compared the Home Office’s migrant boat policy to Nazi Germany, Lawrenson said: ‘They’re frightened to death.

‘Absolutely, totally frightened to death. I think day by day the integrity of the corporation gets chipped off.

‘It used to be absolutely fantastic, but they are woke plus 100 per cent.’

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Metro.co.uk approached the BBC for a response over Lawrenson’s claims but they were not willing to make a comment.

Last month, Alan Shearer defended the BBC after Jeff Stelling blasted the broadcaster for a ‘terrible production decision’ on Match of the Day.

Stelling took issue with how Newcastle’s 4-3 win over West Ham was covered, with pundits failing to properly analyse Kalvin Phillips’ foul on Anthony Gordon, which led to a penalty and subsequent goal.