Alan Shearer and Micah Richards were busy teasing Gary Lineker about his Match of the Day future being thrown into doubt when he suddenly turned the tables on the programme’s two biggest pundits.

“I believe you’re in a similar predicament, you two, as well,” he retorted during what was the latest episode of the trio’s The Rest is Football podcast.

Lineker had just broken his silence following the purported leaking of a BBC email announcing the departure of its highest-paid presenter, with the 63-year-old stressing negotiations with the corporation over a contract that expires at the end of the season had only “just started”.

Now, he was raising the prospect of there being not one but three empty chairs to fill on Match of the Day next season by highlighting that his The Rest is Football co-hosts were coming to the end of their own BBC deals.

And while Shearer and Richards’ futures at the corporation are not necessarily tied to that of Lineker, an en masse parting of the ways next summer cannot be entirely ruled out.

It all begs the question about what a post-Lineker Match of the Day would look like and how the BBC would fill a void left not only by the show’s star presenter but potentially by its entire first-choice line-up.

The overwhelming favourite to succeed Lineker is his understudy, and Match of the Day 2 presenter, Mark Chapman, who has become arguably the UK’s most versatile sports broadcaster and – just as importantly – a safe pair of hands.

Given the rows to have engulfed the BBC when it comes to Lineker, why would it not want to replace a superstar former England captain who too often appears a law unto himself with a classically-trained corporation lifer who has not posted on X for almost four years?

Doing so would align Match of the Day with the flagship football programmes of other major Premier League UK television rights holders, who began dispensing with outspoken presenters following the sexism scandal that engulfed Richard Keys and Andy Gray at Sky Sports.

Following August’s shock sacking of Jermaine Jenas, Gabby Logan and Alex Scott have risen up the pecking order of contenders to succeed Lineker. Both would represent a landmark appointment for a show some may feel is still too “blokey”, although Scott’s cause has not been helped by Football Focus haemorrhaging viewers since she replaced Dan Walker as host.

It seems unlikely the BBC would turn to ITV’s Mark Pougatch or Sky Sports’ Dave Jones if it had a ready-made replacement in-house, while Richards laughed off being “4-1” for the job with the bookmakers on The Rest is Football. Even Shearer joked: “I’m not signing my new contract if you’re a presenter, by the way.”

If Lineker does prove to be the last of a dying breed, the same cannot be said for his podcast co-hosts, who are fast becoming the prototype punditry duo in the modern broadcast landscape – even if they are inevitably not to everyone’s taste.

The increasingly-trenchant Shearer has torched his reputation as a man whose ideal weekend involves creosoting his fence, and has also become as at ease in the co-commentary seat for the BBC and Amazon as he is savaging the latest Manchester United performance.

Completing the odd-couple double act is Richards, whose larger-than-life persona and refusal to take himself too seriously is the perfect antidote to Shearer’s desire to put the world to rights.

Unlike with Lineker, obvious replacements for the duo – in-house at least – appear thin on the ground, while it would be almost impossible to replicate an on-screen chemistry which is underpinned by their regular jousting on The Rest is Football.

Ian Wright’s Match of the Day exit at the end of last season was a major blow in that respect as he could have provided some continuity alongside Danny Murphy, who tends to stand in when Shearer is absent.

Since the demise of Jenas, Joe Hart and Theo Walcott have been blooded in a way that suggests they are being groomed for bigger things, although they are still in that recently retired phase of punditry often characterised by a reluctance to criticise former clubs and team-mates.

That cannot be said for veterans Martin Keown and Dion Dublin, who appear to be behind Murphy in the pecking order, as do a cast of largely inoffensive bit-part players that includes Leon Osman, Shay Given, Stephen Warnock, Ashley Williams and Glenn Murray.

And if giving Lineker’s job to Logan would be a statement move by the BBC, so would elevating Fara Williams or Steph Houghton, or even turning to Jill Scott, whose infectious personality has made her a celebrity outside football and who boasts an army of fans in her own right.

There would certainly be pressure to recruit one star name if Lineker, Shearer and Richards were all to exit at once and it would be no surprise to see Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher or even Roy Keane being linked with Match of the Day.

But that feels unlikely, given Neville and Carragher’s vast Sky commitments, while fellow Super Sunday regular Keane does not appear the BBC type.

If the corporation did want to gamble on a soundbite-friendly former hardman midfielder, Graeme Souness left Sky in the summer of last year and has since been delivering his unique brand of punditry on ITV. Whether the 71-year-old would fancy the ultra-late Saturday night finishes at the BBC’s Salford headquarters is another matter.

Age being a factor in working on Match of the Day was something to which Lineker himself alluded last year during another round of gentle teasing about his future on The Rest is Football. “I’m ancient,” Lineker joked. “My time is nearly up.”