‘I’m not sure people know this’ – Gary Lineker reveals Match of the Day’s contractual obligation with Premier League

GARY LINEKER has revealed that the BBC have a contractual agreement with the Premier League that limits the amount of game time that can be shown on Match of the Day.

Just two Prem games took place on Saturday as Arsenal hosted Crystal Palace and Brentford faced Nottingham Forest.

The bizarre fixture scheduling saw BBC highlights show Match of the Day altered, meaning host Alex Scott and pundits Alan Shearer and Ashley Williams had more time to spend on analysis.

However, ex-Manchester City star Micah Richards joked that Shearer spoke too much during the 35-minute show.

Speaking on podcast, Richards said: “Talk about overdoing it! You’re talking about (Martin) Odegaard with the socks! Talk about over-analysing a situation!”

Shearer responded: “We had two hours spare in the afternoon, we had to do something.”

However, Lineker then chimed in to reveal why the pundits were forced to spend more time on analysis.

The England icon explained that the BBC can only use a limited amount of match footage.

He said: “I’m not sure if people know this but you’re only allowed a certain amount of time of each game.

“I think it’s limited to something like a maximum of 12 minutes.

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“So therefore whereas normally we would squeeze in six or eight games and condense our chatting into two or three minutes per game, when you’ve just got two games in 35 minutes you’ve got ten minutes or so to chat.

“It’s a contractual obligation – I think it’s 12 minutes but I’ll check that.”

While discussing Arsenal’s 5-0 win over Crystal Palace during the show, ex-Everton star Williams spotted a potential set-piece “trigger” from Martin Odegaard which involved the midfielder pulling up his socks.

Williams explained: “There’s always a trigger for what the movement’s going to be.

“We can see they have worked on whether it’s a front-post corner or a back-post corner.

“If you keep an eye on Odegaard, we feel – maybe we’ve had too much time on our hands – but we feel that maybe he’s signalling something to the corner taker.

“He’s in the same place for every corner and he’s playing with his socks.  

“There is synchronicity regarded whether they go to the front or the back. Every clip we see here he is doing the same thing where he’s playing with his socks. It might be coincidence, yes.

“But it is a big coincidence that he’s always there and always doing something with his sock.”