After a couple of high-profile – and teeth-grindingly obvious – dives in recent weeks, the subject of players conning referees is once again high on football’s agenda.

Dele Alli did it to win a penalty in Tottenham Hotspur’s recent 5-0 win over Swansea City and Hull’s Robert Snodgrass was guilty of an even worse example of ‘simulation’ in his team’s game against Crystal Palace.

To his credit, Snodgrass apologised after the game, claiming he had expected to be tackled, which is why he went to ground.

But even if that is true, it doesn’t change the fact that the referee wrongly awarded a penalty that won his team a point they didn’t deserve and cost Crystal Palace two points which they did.

All this has prompted a renewed call for retrospective action to be taken against players that dive. Burnley manager Sean Dyche, for example, has said introducing punishment based on post-match video evidence will have diving eradicated from the sport in no time.

“It’s simple to officiate. You have a panel of experts and give out bans. Within six months the panel would be defunct because people wouldn’t be doing it anymore,” he said.

In principle I find it hard to disagree with Dyche. Diving has long been one of my pet hates in football and retrospective bans could certainly help clamp down on this vile practice.

However, where I differ from Dyche is that I don’t think it is the players that should be banned – I believe it is the clubs they play for that should be punished.

Let’s be honest here: If a club were fighting relegation and a player dived to win a penalty which ultimately ensured their survival, would that player having a three-match ban really have much impact in the greater scheme of things?

The player wouldn’t care because – sadly – some of his team’s fans would see him as some sort of warped hero while the club is hardly likely to get angry at a player who has just saved them tens of millions of pounds. They would probably send him on a five-star world cruise while he served his ban.

Imagine Hull stay up by a single point this season. How valuable will Snodgrass’ dive be then? £100 million? No club is going to worry too much about a player getting banned for simulation if it ensures they stay in the financial Promised Land.

However, if the retrospective action Dyche is talking about was taken against the club and not the player, things would be very, very different.

If you made it so that points, the very lifeblood of Premier League existence, were at stake, then tolerance of diving would be instantly reduced to zero. And, crucially, this would come from the clubs themselves.

If you made it so that points, the very lifeblood of Premier League existence, were at stake, then tolerance of diving would be instantly reduced to zero

Don’t misunderstand me here – I am not suggesting for one minute than any club currently tells its players to dive if the opportunity arrives. I like to think there is still enough integrity left within the game for that not to be the case.

However, the truth is that with so much money at stake, most clubs won’t see diving as being entirely evil on those occasions it works in their favour.

Make them suffer by putting their football cash cow at risk, and you watch how diving will become a thing of the past.

And not in six months either. Overnight.

Pep is there to stay

We all know by now that I am not president of the Pep Guardiola Fan Club.

However, the speculation last week, including from the man himself, about whether or not he will be given the time to get things right at the Etihad is nothing short of insane.

Whether or not you think he is the football messiah (I don’t, many do) he still remains one of the top coaches in the world.

City desperately wanted him and fought hard to get him. They put infrastructure in place to entice him to the Etihad. If the club’s owners had bent over any further backwards in their bid to lure him to Manchester they would have snapped their collective spines.

So does anybody really think a poor spell during the first few months of his reign is going to end up with Guardiola joining the ranks of the unemployed? Of course it isn’t.

City won’t sack him if they finish outside the top four, they won’t sack him if he fails to win a trophy, they probably won’t even sack him if they got relegated. There is just no way on God’s earth that Manchester City will be sacking Pep Guardiola now or in the foreseeable future. Anyone even seeing it as a remote possibility is entirely delusional.

Wenger out of luck

You’ve got to feel just a tad sorry for Arsene Wenger.

The Arsenal boss has spent the couple of years listening to people moan and whinge about his team’s failure to top their Champions League group.

Finishing second has inevitably led to the Gunners facing tough opponents in their round of 16 tie.

In fact, since 2011 they have faced Barcelona twice, Bayern Munich twice, Monaco and Milan.

This season Arsenal won their group… and got drawn against Bayern.

It might be time for the Frenchman to start facing up to the fact that the Champions League just doesn’t like him.

Rover loaded

Blackburn Rovers’ fans must be really sick of the sight of Shane Duffy.

The Irish defender scored for Brighton and Hove Albion against Rovers last Tuesday night in a 3-2 win for theseaside club that sent them top of the Championship.

But this wasn’t the first time this season that Duffy has scored ‘against’ Rovers.

Up until August he was a Blackburn player before signing for Brighton for £4 million.

And in his final two games for his old club before completing his transfer he scored no less than three own goals. That’s four for the season, and there’s still another game to come…

In slightly less light-hearted news, that defeat leaves Blackburn in the Championship relegation places.

How sad that a team that was once an established Premiership side could be on the brink of relegation to League One.

And all thanks to their fantastic owners, the Venky family.

Proud times for the English football authorities’ “fit and proper persons test”… a misnomer if ever there was one.

sportscolumnist@timesofmalta.com
Twitter: @maltablade