Mark "Lawro" Lawrenson and Garth “Garth” Crooks are paid with taxpayers' money for their respective weekly contributions to the BBC Football website: Premier League Predictions and Premier League Team of the Week. This is a petition to have both "experts" stripped of their responsibilities.

With two weeks of the season remaining, Mark Lawrenson's Premier League prediction table has West Ham in the relegation zone, when in reality they still have a chance of finishing in the top four. Lawro has West Bromwich Albion in 7th place above Manchester United, Everton, Stoke City, Swansea City and yes, Leicester City. Admittedly, nobody expected Leicester City to top the league at this stage in the season, but wow... Lawrenson has predicted Claudio Ranieri's team to be in 12th place, just behind Newcastle United and a whopping 51 points behind Manchester City. Fifty-one! Oh, and he has Liverpool in a Champions League spot #shock.

In trying to find rationale behind Lawro’s wild inaccuracies, there may have been a case for him seeming to make his predictions based purely on teams’ squads rather than their previous results and performances. However, West Brom in 7th completely goes against this generous attempt at reasoning. Mark Lawrenson is simply a Liverpool-licking loudmouth.

Let's move on to Garth Crooks' Team of the Week. Critique can be split into two strands, the first of which is his inability to form an actual team. The autumn was clearly a crazy time for the former Tottenham and England striker. A 3-1-1-5 formation in September, which gave holding midfielder Kurt Zouma and an awful lot of work to do behind “central midfielder” Dimitri Payet and the gung-ho strike force, was followed up in October by the 3-3-1-3 involving winger Jeffrey Schlupp at centre-back and forwards Alexi Sanchez, Kevin De Bruyne and Marko Arnautovic as wing-backs and holding midfielder respectively. Not to be left out, November also saw a “classic Crooks”, when the pundit elected to pick a back three and push Tottenham right-back Kyle Walker into midfield. Fair enough, I mean, who out of Shawcross, Skrtel and Smalling could he have shifted to left-back? In winter it appeared that somebody at the BBC had a word in Crooks’ ear, since more often than not he elected for recognised formations and his midfields mostly consisted of, yep, midfielders. It was looking like Garth had turned a corner and was actually dangerously close to doing his job properly. Alas. 13 March. Max Gradel, Dimitri Payet, Harry Kane, Romelu Lukaku and Graziano Pelle are given the freedom to bomb on thanks to the disciplined work of Watford striker Troy Deeney in front of the back four. Call 999, Garth has relapsed.

To complement the crazy formations, Crooks also gives particularly peculiar reasoning for his selection. For a couple of prime examples we need look back no further than 24 April. Here is his explanation for including Southampton’s Dusan Tadic:

"What on earth is going on at Aston Villa? Some of their players are clearly losing the plot. Jores Okore asks not to be considered for the remainder of the season, former captain Gabby Agbonlahor is suspended pending an internal investigation into his professional conduct - and that's just off the field.

"Meanwhile Leandro Bacuna's gift-wrapped back pass presented Southampton's Dusan Tadic with his first of two nicely-taken goals. However, what has proved even more interesting than Bacuna's lamentable performance against the Saints was the player insisting that he wants to play Champions League football next season. The question I would like to pose is, with whom? Real Madrid or Bayern Munich? Getting his agent to ring either club is a mere phone call but such delusions of grandeur will require far more imagination. Perhaps the agent could add Okore and Agbonlahor as part of the arrangement in order to sweeten the deal?"

Oh well, at least he got half a sentence... And now let’s see why Manchester City’s Pablo Zabaleta got the nod:

"You always know a team is going places when players don't want to be brought off the field at any price. That was the reaction of Pablo Zabaleta during Manchester City's win at Chelsea last week when Manuel Pellegrini substituted him after a clumsy tackle that could have seen the full-back shown a second yellow card. The referee gave Zabaleta the benefit of the doubt but Pellegrini refused to be so lenient and whisked the player off the park without a second's hesitation. The manager knew that much more was at stake and he needed Zabaleta for a punishing schedule, involving two games against Real Madrid in the Champions League and some tough Premier League fixtures as City look ensure a top-four spot. Pellegrini was right to do what he did. The full-back not only played against Stoke but also showed what an important asset he is when he brilliantly raided down the right and set up Kelechi Iheanacho for a tap-in. Sometimes players have to be saved from themselves."

To summarise, Garth thought Zabaleta was the best right-sided defender in the whole top tier that weekend because he did a clumsy tackle, luckily avoided a second yellow card and got substituted.

No more examples needed. Garth Crooks is a moron.

If you do not want your taxes to be spent on the wages of Mark Lawrenson and Garth Crooks, please sign this petition and share it among your friends. They are both pathetic excuses for football "experts” and should be replaced by competent pundits – and just for the record, BBC, that certainly does not include Neil Lennon or Martin Keown.