Charlie Nicholas has hit out at Sky Sports for staying silent over the treatment of Andy Walker.
The former Celtic striker has been a fixture of Sky’s coverage of Scottish football for more than a decade but was refused entry into Ibrox for the Glasgow derby at the start of the month.
That news took a day to surface, later on it was reported that Celtic have also banned Walker for comments that they were upset about at the start of January. As recently as March 21 Walker was working inside Celtic Park for Sky but the day after he was barred from Ibrox it surfaced that he was no longer welcome across the city.
Nothing has been said in public by either club, the SPFL or Sky Sports with the final matches of the season being shown this weekend.
Picking up on his column in The Express, The Sun reports Nicholas saying:
It is an absolute disgrace how Andy Walker has been left exposed by Celtic and Rangers. I haven’t spoken to my old friend in a wee while, since I left Sky.
The Old Firm duo have banned Andy from their grounds. They are two of the least helpful clubs in the world. They are happy to take the money from the television companies yet they want to tell pundits what they should and shouldn’t be saying. It’s a shambles the way Andy has been treated.
Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher are hard-hitting about Manchester United and Liverpool in their roles as pundits, but do they get banned by their old clubs?
No, they don’t. I am as critical of Arsenal as Celtic. Arsenal don’t like it but they still treat me the same way at the club as the day I signed.
What concerns me is the lack of support that Sky has shown Andy. They should be saying to Rangers and Celtic, ‘If you don’t let him into your grounds then we won’t be paying you for those games’.
Celtic couldn’t wait to jump on the bandwagon because of Andy’s criticism after they heard Rangers had banned him. We had Neil Lennon on Soccer Saturday the other day – the same man who demanded an apology from Sky for Andy’s comments.
Neil Doncaster and the SPFL must step in to sort this out because, if they don’t, they could end up jeopardising any future television deals.
Nicholas was dropped from Sky Sports News last summer. The SPFL is one season into a five year exclusive contract with Sky Sports having previously shared coverage with BT Sport.
