Refs must help to stop diving too

WE SAW the first Premier League player banned retrospectively this week for diving and I think it’s good the FA have taken steps to remove the problem from our game. But on the flip side of what happened to Everton striker Oumar Niasse (below), who was suspended for two games after colliding with Crystal Palace defender Scott Dann, I would say referees are going to have to start giving penalties when there is contact and a player does not go down. I’ve seen so many shirt pulls or fouls when a player tries to stay on his feet and the penalty isn’t given. That is a big problem. If you stay on your feet, your manager and your teammates will hammer you. Simple. You have cost your team. So you have got to find a way of drawing attention to the fact there has been contact. Sometimes players go down n knowing there is about to be contact. If you don’t go down, you don’t get the penalty. Diving is not condoned in the e Premier League and when someone comes into our squad from abroad who does dive, I’ll always tell them we don’t do it here. But unless referees start awarding penalties — even if a player doesn’t go down when there has been a foul — you’ll keep on seeing diving. Until referees become stricter and start punishing shirt-pulling in the area or illegal tackles that don’t necessarily knock someone to the floor, players will still exaggerate fouls. Nobody wants to see diving in the English game but there is still a long way to go to removing it altogether.