WHY WON’T WE STOP THE DIVERS?

Dyche feels like he’s the only one speaking out on game’s biggest crime

THE day was all about record-breakers. Manchester City’s 11th win in a row and Sergio Aguero now poised to replace Eric Brook as the club’s all-time top scorer.

Sean Dyche, on the other hand, just sounded like a broken record. At times, the Burnley manager must feel like he is leading the fight against diving all on his own.

Dyche has railed against it long enough and rather optimistically believed the introduction of retrospective bans for simulation this season would stamp out the problem in six months.

But after Bernardo Silva’s tumble led to the penalty decision that broke Burnley’s resistance at the Etihad, Dyche came across as a man who fears he is fighting a losing battle.

‘I don’t think anyone seems to want to change it apart from me,’ said Dyche. ‘It’s the moral values of the game that I worry about. If your kid cheated in a maths test, you wouldn’t go “Well done”. You’d say, “What are you doing?” You’d go down the school and say, “Sorry, he cheated, he needs to do that again”.

‘But, in football, it’s almost like “good lad”. I find that really weird. Morally, I find that really odd. Accidental simulation, as they call it, happens. But there are too many in this league to be accidental.

‘You have to stand for something and it’s just not for me.’

The debate surrounding Burnley goalkeeper Nick Pope’s challenge on Silva is complicated by the fact that there was indeed contact between the players as they chased a loose ball in the box.

Enough for the Portugal star to go down so theatrically? Dyche didn’t think so and the FA will give their verdict today.

The video will be studied and a decision made on whether to refer it to a three-man panel made up of an ex-referee, an ex-player and an ex-manager.

If each one were to decide Silva dived, he could become the first Premier League player to be hit with a mandatory twomatch retrospective ban for simulation.

Given that it has to be an obvious case of cheating, City’s £43million summer signing will be hopeful of avoiding punishment.

Silva has no doubts that he was justified in going down. ‘He clearly touched me. I felt it,’ he said. ‘He touched me and my ankle turned. It hurt a little bit and, for me, it was a penalty.’ It enabled Aguero to score his record- equalling 177th goal for City from the penalty spot, but it would be harsh to suggest the controversy had a decisive impact on the final outcome.

Nicolas Otamendi and Leroy Sane added second-half goals to send Pep Guardiola’s side five points clear at the top of the table as the club celebrated 11 successive wins in a single season for the first time. City’s scintillating start has brought them 32 goals in nine league games but the contribution of new goalkeeper Ederson Moraes has been somewhat overlooked.

The Brazilian’s distribution is key to Guardiola’s system — Dyche noted how his long kicks have given City a new dimension — and eight clean sheets in 12 games tell their own story. Guardiola also praised the bravery of his £35m signing, who lunged at the feet of Chris Wood and Scott Arfield in the first half, a month after Liverpool striker Sadio Mane’s right boot left him requiring eight stitches in his face.

‘It’s the way I play,’ he said. ‘If I have to put my hand, my head or my foot there to help the team, that’s what I’m going to do. I have always played the same way. I have no fear of anything. I knew how physical the game is here.’