Clear skies ahead as Gray departs

We can bid farewell to football pundit Andy Gray (and perhaps his presenter, Richard Keys), after he was sacked for unwittingly exposing his misogynistic views on women in football. Gobsmacked by the appointment of a female linesman for Saturday lunchtime’s fixture between Wolves and Liverpool, Gray asserted, in his wearisome and characteristically forthright manner, that “women don’t know the offside rule.” At least Sian Massey, the offending official, need not worry about Gray’s predatory instincts getting the better of him. When a colleague suggested that Massey was “a bit of a looker,” the former striker set him straight: “Nah, I wouldn’t. I definitely wouldn’t…”

Keys, the simple Sancho Panza to Gray’s impulsive, frequently delusional Don Quixote, was not to be outdone. “Did you hear charming Karren Brady (West Ham United vice-chairman) this morning complaining about sexism? Do me a favour, love,” he wheezed, oblivious to the irony, laced around his seedy remarks like a pair of crude lingerie.

For those of you ready to sympathise with presenters whose private conversations have been publicly exposed, think again. This was not, I fear, an isolated lapse in decency and broadcasting standards. The remarks later proved to be not only chronically stupid but fundamentally inaccurate, an increasingly common feature in the court of Andy Gray. Massey, it turns out, was not “fucking hopeless,” as the éminence gray had deemed Wendy Toms (another female official), but actually “perfectly competent.”

With sycophant extraordinaire Richard Keys alongside him, Gray’s pompous verbal volleys regularly go unchallenged. The presenter is so obsessed with fawning over ‘Big Sam’ and saluting the old boys’ club of hard knocks and tough tackles that his studio patter seems incapable of venturing beyond the inane. Clarence Seedorf and Roy Hodgson proved, along with Dan Walker on Football Focus, that erudite analysis is not the preserve of the print media, and that experience and intelligence can coexist with a television show dedicated to football. Even Adrian Chiles’s everyman schtick is leagues ahead of Keys’s obsequious professionalism.

We love Sky Sports Super Sundays because they beam a constant stream of high quality players to our living rooms. Unfortunately, the punditry of Keys and Gray is a constant stream of something entirely different. Sky can rest assured nobody will be deserting its winning franchise once the double act’s mics are turned off for good.