PREMIER LEAGUE BAN THE CHEATS!
What message are we sending out to kids?’ rages Dyche as he slams football’s lack of morality’, diving Gunners, ref, Klinsmann & Drogba
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Neil Moxley
SEAN DYCHE accused two Arsenal players of ‘blatant diving’ in a furious rant as he called upon football’s authorities to clamp down on cheating.
Burnley’s boss was seething over the antics of a couple of Unai Emery’s players following a defeat at the Emirates.
Dyche was upset at the performance of referee Kevin Friend anyway, but a string of incidents involving Granit Xhaka, Matteo Guendouzi and Mesut Ozil came under his microscope.
And he let rip, saying: “Where do you want to start with the decisions? Shall we start with the 61 games without a penalty?
“Today there was a clear double-handed push in the back on Kevin Long. That’s a pretty good place to start, I think.
“Ashley Barnes got booked when their player clearly threw an elbow out at him. I’ve seen that one back. There was an unnatural movement towards the face. Somehow Ashley came out of that and got booked.
“Then there were two dives. No one seems to want to do anything about diving in the game apart from me. I’m still amazed by it.
“One of which he (Guendouzi) doesn’t get booked for. Nothing will happen retrospectively. And if one of their players had been booked for it, then he would have been off. Even at the end, Matej Vydra goes through with Xhaka and touches him marginally on his shoulder and Xhaka goes down and gets a free-kick.
“It’s centre-halves now, going down after hardly anything. I think Ozil was involved in another one. Incredible.
“But no one seems to want to do anything about it. I want to see people banned because if they were, it would evaporate out of the game.
“Millions of children are watching this. You wouldn’t ruffle your kids’ hair if they come home after school and cheated in a maths test.
“They cheat at a game of football and it’s OK. It’s almost like, ‘Well done. We got away with that one’.
“There’s hundreds of millions of pounds at stake in this game and we have got all kinds of gadgets to view these things and hopefully VAR will make a difference – but I don’t think it will make a radical ical difference – I’m talking about the e morality of the game.”
Power
Dyche said that it would be down to the Premier League, Football Association and the e referees’ body – the Professional nal Game Match Officials Limited – to o get together and fix the issue.
He added: “There’s no point speaking to the referees. They haven’t got any power. It’s a bigger picture than that.
“It’s really important to point out ut
I’m not talking about gamesmanship. ship. That’s been there ever since I was playing and that was a long time ago.
“I’m talking about blatant diving. Chea Cheating. Where there has been no contact co at all and people are fall falling over. The powers-that-be ha have to get their heads together. T The Premier League, the FA, th the PGMOL – they’ve all got to ge get their heads together because it’s gone too far.
“W “When you think about our lifetim lifetimes, the first two that was absolutely alarming – and they were fantastic players so let’s clear that up for a start – were Jurgen Klinsmann (inset, top) and Didier Drogba (inset, below). When they came over and started diving it was, ‘We can’t have this’. It was on Match of the Day every week. It was everywhere. It slowly morphed into our culture here. Now, it’s every week and no one hardly mentions it.
“They go, ‘Oh, we don’t want to see that, do we?’ And then they move on to the next match and the next clip.
“I’m the only manager who talks about this. So let’s take it out of the managers’ hands because I’m the only one who talks about it.”