If Tony Pulis wants to stamp out diving he should start with Matt Etherington

Posted on October 31st, 2010 | by Tim in Arsenal News

On Friday, Tony Pulis blasted the divers in the English Premier League demanding that video evidence be used after the match to prosecute players for simulation and if they are proved to have cheated, give them a 3 match ban. Pointing out that ample video evidence exists to spot the divers and ensure proper punishment, the Stoke manager had this scathing criticism for the dirty cheats in the League:

I see players simulating (to win) free-kicks and falling over and putting enormous pressure on referees. That’s an area we have to look at and an area we have to address. If you catch a player who has cheated I think you should be banned for three games. If you get someone who goes in the box and falls over and cheats, you’ve got enough video replays now to show the fella’s cheated.

Now, people vary wildly over the amount of contact that is needed before we can agree to call something a dive: for some any contact is a foul and for others a leg breaking tackle is completely acceptable. But one thing we can all agree on is if there is NO contact and a player goes down, it’s always a dive.

Which brings me to Saturday’s match between Stoke City and Everton. If Tony Pulis is serious about using post-match video to ban divers, he’ll only need to review the match tapes of his own game to find the most glaring case of diving this season. And since the player in question is his very own Matthew Etherington, I fully expect Pulis to take matters into his own hands and ban Etherington for three games for this egregious act of cheating.