Inside BBC crisis talks amid toxic Gary Lineker saga as Match of the Day odds emerge

Gary Lineker sat out a watered-down Match of the Day on Saturday night after being quit by BBC chiefs, leading to a boycott by his colleagues, including experts and commentators

Video loading

Video not available

Click to playTap to play

'Bring back Gary Lineker' heckled by BBC News during live report

BBC chiefs are holding crisis talks in a desperate bid to resolve the Match of the Day crisis.

General manager Tim Davie has reported an olive branch being offered to reinstated host Gary Lineker to lead the show. BBC officials are also talking to employees in the next 24 hours after another day of utter chaos at the company.

Pressure is mounting on the BBC hierarchy as Lineker enjoyed support from pundits like Ian Wright and Alan Shearer while the 5Live radio program was also decimated over the weekend. Lineker refused to back down and received widespread praise for taking a stand on his principles.

Staff commentators have been placed in difficult positions while freelancers have been able to lower the tools and the situation has become toxic and will certainly cause a major backlash. They showed the Women's Super League live on BBC2, but were forced to use the global live feed as TV commentators had pulled out all weekend.

That reduced Saturday night's match of the day to a 20 minute farce, match day 2 should be the same and crisis talks hope to avoid another embarrassment next weekend.

Remarkably, despite the reduced broadcast and ugly stalemate, Saturday night's match of the day was watched by 2.58 million people, or almost 500,000 viewers compared to the 2.09 million viewers of last week.

Gary Lineker was photographed outside his home on Sunday and is now in talks with the BBC (

Picture:

PENNSYLVANIA)

The BBC don't have global live feed rights for Premier League games, but they do for the WSL and also the FA Cup, which could be the emergency option for the weekend. end next with live quarter-finals scheduled on the network.

But many independent commentators are expressing concern that they don't want their voices aired...