KopTalk.com Forums Football Liverpool FC Forum Andy Gray Sacked

Hidden microphones in the stands with the THOUGHT POLICE on standby are coming here.
You say one derogatory comment to anyone about anything soon, and they'll be swooping down and 'cleansing' you of your disgusting thoughts and jovial sexist male banter comments.
You've been warned. Take heed.

This PC brigade crap has gone too far,I can`t call a barmaid "love" any more, if I open a door for a woman I get a dirty look and no thank you, if I B@llock a female in work I have to be so careful in my phraseology, I can`t shout at women drivers as women say "and anyway, we are safer that men cos we have less accidents"-thats because they cause them by wearing short skirts and tight tops with no bra on and our eyes will always stray!!!!!! Oh sorry love, I know you are reading this but ehhhh!!! rant over going back to clearing out the gutter.

as ridiculous as all this is and I am sure not legal. From a Liverpool FC perspective this is marvelous. Gray and Keys are the main instigators of negative comments against LFC becoming fact. Think of the Gerrard has to play centre midfield(never says anything against England when on the left), Remember the 100 consecutive games changing the side, Fergie has gone well past that now, heard anything?
Zonal marking - Pepe had the golden gloves 4 out of the 5 years he has been with us. we have conceeded more goals from set pieces this year than the last two full seasons put together. heard anything about man to man?
Maybe just maybe a new viewpoint from Sky might give a more level playing field?

to be fair though thats sky in general

Following the contraversial sexist comments made bt Andy Gray & Richard Keys before the game on Saturday, it has emerged that Lineswoman Sian Massey was in tears before kick off - when she saw the other Linesman was wearing the same outfit as her!

All women are snakes with tits.

Just bought fifa 12...its great. When the mrs picks the controller up andy gray shouts 'get back in the fookin' kitchen!'

He won't be able to sue for his termination because it is complete lawful. All this we all say it down the boozer, well that's all well and good but he isn't down the boozer he is at work, in a very high profile highly paid job. You can drink in the pub, you can't at work, you can say what you want to your mates, you can't at work.
And even if you lot don't agree with me about it being right to sack him, it is a fact he won't have a leg to stand on if he tried to sue because sky could easily cover themselves with the fact that his sexist and prejudice words reflect badly on them as a company. A company is well within their rights to sack someone for it.

this is long, but i thought it hit some very valid points abbout what happened:

You get a measure of a man's personal popularity by those who gather round him when he is in trouble.

As Sky colleagues queued to stitch him up by releasing old footage of his crass behaviour stockpiled against the day it might be used for revenge, it is clear Andy Gray did not have much in the way of support from those who worked with him. Or as he would put it, under him. 17 years of failing to look a female co-worker in the eye (his gaze was generally occupied elsewhere) finally took their toll. When the only person prepared publicly to back you is Ian Wright, and then he abandons you, there is nowhere to go but out the door.

That Gray is not a particularly pleasant bloke will come as little surprise to those who saw him on television exploring the outer reaches of self-importance. And Richard Keys is, so those who have worked with him attest, not much nicer. Their saloon bar banter about the assistant referee Sian Massey was not unusual, apparently. It was as ignorantly incorrect as it was inappropriate. By the very excellence of her performance Massey refuted the pair's laughable insistence that women are somehow genetically incapable of mastering a set of rules.

As to Keys's claim that her presence on the Molineux touchline was evidence of a "game gone mad", it might be argued that the elevation of someone on the grounds of their sustained competence marks a rare moment of sanity in the sport. More difficult to defend on mental health terms is the idea that the front man of a television show is worth more than £1 million a year. Or as they probably don't say in the Manchester City dressing room, 50 nurses.

Yet is a profusion of boorishness really justification to sack someone? Particularly as, for all the prehistoric nature of his personal opinion, Gray remains the best football analyst on television. And the fact is, despite being paid to deliver opinion, he always kept his own wider outlook quiet when broadcasting. He is no John McCririck. There was no hint of political agenda when he explained why Chelsea's back four is not operating properly, no mounting the soapbox when he celebrated another Steven Gerrard wonder strike. All he talked was football. And in doing so, usually articulated a level of common sense rare in his calling.

His off-air comments were clearly wrong-headed and he should have been made aware why they were so. But to fire him is ridiculous. It is particularly so given that he was initially suspended and warned about future conduct. I'm not a lawyer, but to then dismiss him for something he had done in the past, thus precluding him the opportunity to demonstrate that he had learned from his mistake, is surely fertile ground for unfair dismissal.

The reaction of his employer is far more to do with Sky's anxiety to end a series of damaging headlines at a time of a highly sensitive takeover. This was corporate public relations. He was embarrassing them, full stop. Yet part of that embarrassment came from within. If Sky's own employees had not leaked so prodigiously, no-one would have been any the wiser, the headlines would not have been generated and the corporation would not have been compromised. Gray was, quite simply, knifed by those he had patronised down the years.

And then subsequently not protected by those who for 17 seasons were happy to ignore his unreconstructed sexism because he delivered viewers. If a haughty self-regard coupled with old-school views preclude someone from doing their job then half the sports media are unemployable. You only have to look at some of the candidates to replace him on Sky - Glenn Hoddle, Graeme Souness, Stan Collymore, Paul Merson - to see that inappropriate behaviour is endemic in the calling. If everyone has to be a decent person to do the job, the future is silence.

Not that Gray will long be without a job. He is too good a broadcaster for someone not to take him on. No doubt when he does return to the airwaves - probably at Talksport - he will present himself as a victim of political correctness gone mad. Whereas the truth is he was undermined by a failure to follow the oldest adage in showbiz: be nice to people on the way up, because you will need them on the way down.

Nice post flames