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Football

19th Aug 2016

Richard Keys took the opportunity to have a sly dig at Sky Sports’ Friday Night Football

Taking football seriously

Darragh Murphy

The first Friday Night Football of the season, featuring Jeff Stelling and Rachel Riley, has divided opinion.

Riley’s debut has gone down well but the same can’t be said for the forced banter among analysts Jamie Redknapp, Ryan Giggs, Jamie Carragher and Thierry Henry.

Chris Kamara’s jovial introduction to Manchester United’s first game of the season at Old Trafford left many fans cringing and the muscling of fun down the throats of viewers did not go unnoticed by a certain Richard Keys.

Keys left Sky Sports in 2011 in hostile circumstances after pressure was put on the presenter when derogatory comments from he and Andy Gray regarding female assistant referee Sian Massey were leaked.

Keys and Gray now head up the football coverage on BeIn sports and, after plugging his network’s version of Friday Night Football early in the afternoon, he took a sly but pretty obvious dig at the banterful approach to football analysis being broadcast by his former employer.

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