Some terribly childish fun with the Match of the Day team

[Pies]

Lawro’s crystal ball churns out another beauty

We at The Spoiler are huge fans of Mark “Nostradamus” Lawrenson and his BBC Sport Premier League predictions. Looking ahead at tomorrow night’s Blackburn/ Bolton clash, Lawro let out a gem that closely rival his classic “They are unpredictable and that is the way they will be for the rest of the season“:

If you wanted a game this week that involves tackling then this may be the one.

If this call for fans of tackling isn’t bizarre enough, the MOTD pundit also left the “Verdict” section blank. Which kind of defeats the object of a prediction.

See the rest of his insights here.

Mystic Meg better watch her back

As you may have gathered by now, The Spoiler is a huge fan of Mark Lawrenson’s BBC prediction column. And while this week’s edition didn’t contain quite as much nonsense as we have become accustomed to, he more than made up for it with the above gem about West Ham.

Lawro claims that West Ham are unpredictable, but then goes on to predict that they will remain impossible to predict for the rest of the season. Hmm.

At least he stayed true to the unpredictability theme with his verdict for Saturday’s match, highlighting West Ham’s recent wins and Newcastle’s losses before prophesying that Joe Kinnear’s side will come out on top.

But not such great news for Hull and Bolton

After Mark Lawrenson let the Robbie Keane-shaped cat out of the Anfield bag yesterday, The Spoiler though it would be prudent to analyse the wisdom of the pundit with the thatched barnet.

Every week on the BBC website, Lawro reveals his predicitons for the action over the coming weekend, and with the help of some message board dwellers who have been paying far too much attention, we have compiled an updated table* of how the Premier League would look if his predicitions came true every week.

As you can see, Lawrenson did not see either of Chelsea’s losses coming (to be fair, who did?) and tenaciously backed Arsenal for victory after each of their fruitless outings.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the table, Bolton and Hull should be thankful that the BBC expert is no modern day Nostradamus.

*Statto warning: the West Ham/ Newcastle prediction has gone AWOL, so the table is not 100 per cent accurate.

Mark Lawrenson makes a shock revelation on Irish radio

Mark Lawrenson revealed on Irish radio station Today FM that he had spoken to Steven Gerrard who told him that Robbie Keane could quit Anfield in the January transfer window. The BBC pundit said:

“Sorry to name drop but I had a drink with Steven Gerrard at a function on Saturday night, and we were talking about Robbie Keane.

Heterosexual MOTD pundit suffers after 118 118 blunder

Thanks to the “Ask Us Anything” feature of directory enquiries service 118 118, pointless trivia is just a touch of a button away. The mustachioed men brought shame to their running vests recently by sending out racist jokes to those foolish enough to request them, and have now landed themselves in hot water over supposed “facts” concerning Mark Lawrenson.

Confused by his calm demeanour and soft speaking voice, a punter texted to ask if the former Liverpool defender was gay. A rogue 118er sent the following reply: “Mark Lawrenson is married and regularly take sit up the a**e. thx!”

Lawrenson is married with two children, and probably doesn’t approve of this answer.

Hansen and Lawrenson “work rate” hits an all-time low

Match of the Day 2 received a couple of unwelcome visitors last night when a six-fixture Sunday meant BBC super-pundits Alan Hansen and Mark Lawrenson were forced to interrupt their golf schedule in preparation for spending the evening on the MOTD 2 sofas instead.

Adrian Chiles has done an excellent job of turning MOTD 2 into a brighter, cleverer and more informative spin-off, largely thanks to Lee Dixon’s critical input and an imaginative guest rotation policy. Hansen and Lawrenson, possibly fed up at being unable to adopt their customary lolling posture, given the more modern design of the Sunday seating, turned in one

Sum of human knowledge greater than it was yesterday

With television rights to the weekend football highlights package up for discussion again shortly, this may be the penultimate season viewers of Match of the Day get to enjoy Alan Shearer and Mark Lawrenson yawning back at them from a BBC sofa each Saturday night.

But the prospect of unemployment hasn’t blunted Alan “good at discussing strikers” Shearer’s quest to unravel the mysteries of football for the ignorant millions at home.

Last night, following Wigan’s 5-0 education of Hull, the great pundit felt moved to peer into Wigan manager Steve Bruce’s future. “He’ll (Steve Bruce) do really well. He’ll continue to carry on.” Got it.