BREAKING: Simon Thomas to take over from Jeff Stelling on Soccer Saturday

Jeff Stelling's replacement as the presenter of Sky Sports' Soccer Saturday has been found, with Simon Thomas set to be announced.

It was the end of an era on Sky at the end of last season with Stelling walking away from his role in many people's Saturday afternoons.

After 25 years heading up the programme that reported on the scores from around the Premier League and Football League for Saturday 3pm kick offs, Stelling was given an emotional farewell.

It kicked off the search for his replacement, a task that was never going to be easy considering how synonymous he's become with the show.

Whilst the search kicked off we learned that we wouldn't be seeing the 68-year-old anywhere on our screen any time soon as he was put on gardening leave.

Sky were thought to be choosing between Thomas and two of the companies current employees Caroline Barker and Julian Warren.

To many Warren should have been the man to takeover as he often sat in for Stelling when he was off but it seems that Thomas has got the gig.

That's according to the Daily Mail, who claim the 50-year-old is set to be announced as the new presenter as early as next week ahead of the first show of the season on August 5th, when the Football League kicks off.

Thomas has worked for Sky previously. Image: Getty

Thomas worked for the broadcaster from 2005 to 2018, having previously worked for the BBC and presenting Blue Peter.

He had been on Sky Sports News and later presented coverage of the League Cup and Football League, before being the lead for Premier League games.

The 50-year-old walked away from the company after tragically losing his wife following her battle with cancer, in order to look after his young family.

Since returning to broadcasting he has worked as a freelancer and presented some of Amazon Prime Videos live Premier League games.

There has been a huge shake up at Sky recently with pitchside reporter Geoff Shreeves having also left the company, as well as pundit Graeme Souness.

Soccer AM also finished its run as a Sky programme at the end of the season so Saturday's will have a very different look when the new campaign starts next month.

Topics: Sky Sports, Jeff Stelling, Premier League, Football, EFL Championship

Ryan Sidle

Ryan is a journalist for SPORTbible with over eight years of experience. Passionate about all sports, he mainly covers football and F1 - Daniel Ricciardo once spent an entire interview referring to him as 'Ryan Gosling,' still his proudest moment.

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