Mark Lawrenson doubles down on 'woke' BBC comments after being given Match of the Day axe

Mark Lawrenson, the former Match of the Day pundit, has reiterated his criticisms of the 'woke' BBC and its fear of causing offence, which he believes led to his departure from the show.

In 2022, when asked about the reasons behind his exit from the corporation's sports coverage, the ex-Liverpool star responded: "Well, I'm 65 and a white male, so you know."

Lawrenson made his final appearance on Football Focus at the end of the 2021-22 season, recording his last episode before Liverpool's triumph over Chelsea in the FA Cup final. He had been a part of the Saturday lunchtime programme for a quarter of a century, with his first stint on Match of the Day predating this.

After leaving the show, he expressed dissatisfaction with how his departure was handled. Now, almost two years after his last appearance on the Beeb, the 66-year-old has once again criticised the national broadcaster.

"I wasn't happy with the way they dealt with me, basically," Lawrenson revealed on The Ben Heath Podcast. "I'd been there nearly 25 years, great, but I was just signing one-year contracts, season to season. He confessed that the discussion surrounding his exit "really p***ed me off" even though he "kind of knew" what was coming. "Basically I was 65 and white," he concluded.

"There's a few of us," he added, referring by name to Steve Wright, Ken Bruce and Sue Barker, who were all let go by the corporation. Podcast host Heath then asked if Lawrenson believed the BBC has 'gone woke', to which he replied: "Gone woke? It's top of the woke league.

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"They're frightened to death, absolutely, totally frightened to death," he continued, making reference to the BBC's behaviour around Gary Lineker's brief suspension in 2023. Lineker was taken off an episode of Match of the day over social media activity which the broadcaster referred to as a breach of guidelines."

You've seen the stuff with Gary Lineker," Lawrenson added. "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 percent."

Heath then pressed Lawrenson on the comments about the BBC being frightened to death. "They say to everyone 'you can't say this, you can't do that'... it's somebody's opinion, and the thing with Gary Lineker was he works for himself so he's entitled to his own opinion, and rightly or wrongly he's got an opinion about everything. That got to me a bit in the end."