Sadly diving s so prevalent in English football that it is ruining the game as a spectacle, unless the FA want the game to decline, they need to come up with a solution now and I have one.

Watch footage of the Premier League in 1994 and it looks very strange, its football Jim, but not as we know it, at first it's hard to make out what is different, but then it hits you, the players do not fall over everytime an opponent goes near them, they ride tackles, they do not roll over as if shot and the game flowed as a result.

I use 1994 as the example year because that is the season (94/95) that diving officially arrived in the Premier League when Tottenham Hotspur (It just had to be them) signed Jurgen Klinsmann who was considered its Prima Ballerina s such.

Of course it happened before the German forward arrived it was just a lot rarer and a diver was even lambasted by his own team mates and supporters if he did it, it was dealt with quickly and easily, the offender was handed a loaded revolver and was expected to go behind the stand and do the decent thing having shamed his Regiment I mean club.

Klinsmann though was a different matter, you couldn't say you had seen him play till you had seen him throw himself to the ground theatrically, in fact his goal celebration was a version of one of his most theatrical dives.

Back then it was seen as isolated, it was not the English thing, but like Lager, Kebabs and Curry we took it to our hearts and made it our own.

Of course we still consider that Johnny Foreigner is the chief exponent of the art and it cannot be argued that overseas players do seem to have the theatrical content down to a fine art, but the sad fact is that the British players are now just as bad,

Its not just diving though, the average penalty box at a corner or set piece resembles a cross between World Federation Wresting and American Football with the players grappling with each other to try an let the wide receiver make contact unchallended for the ball.

If we do not do something about this, it will completely ruin the game, so what is the solution ?

I have to say I'm not a fan of having instant replays as they do in Cricket or Rugby, the whole idea is to get the game flowing, not stop it even further by countless delays, if we do that then asking for a replay will become just another tactic, every decision will be queried and even if you limit the number of challenges etc it will still add on too much time to the game, supporters like the fact about football that it is a timed spectacle, they know what time to turn up and what time they will leave, they like the speed and continuous action of the game, they do not want constant stoppages.

So my solution is simple, make the act of simulation a retrospective offence, after each game analyse the controversial incidents and then punish those who have been proved to offend.

The punishment should be simple, for the first offence its a one game ban, for the second a two game ban, third a three game ans so forth, ten years ago I attended a presentation given by a then Premier League referee and he said then that he believed if this system as adopted then diving would be stamped out within weeks not months, the referees were asking for this to happen and the FA were refusing.

I believe now is the time to take this action before the game at Premier League level becomes a farce, stamp out diving and you stamp out cheating and you make life easier for referees, two decades ago a referee only had to decide whether he thought that the tackle was a deliberate foul to make a decision, now in a split second he also has to decide whether the player looking for the foul has cheated and in too many cases he has or at the very least attempted to enhance how the tackle appears.

Football supporters are sick of the divers, we are sick of the cheats and we are sick of the managers who condone the behavior whether it be passively by inexplicably missing that very moment in a game where one of the managers own players has cheated the referee or as in the latest case at Stamford Bridge where the manager of Chelsea has accused a referee of not giving one of his divers decisions where other teams cheaters would get them.

Its a farce !

Photo: Action Images

halftimeorange added 12:27 - Oct 6 Perhaps you've forgotten the famous diving Chinaman who played for Manchester City dubbed Lee Wun Pen. In 1971/2 he scored a record number of spotkicks many of which resulted from his own diving. On-pitch plunging has been going on for years but the difference today is that players are taught to do it and it is over-exposed in the media plus you have idiots like Robbie Savage saying it's all part of the game. Next we'll have clubs employing choreographers and Len Goodman will be chair of the PL Referees Panel. God help us!

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bstokesaint added 12:32 - Oct 6 Spot on Nick. Retrospective action is the only solution. I'm really not sure what the issue is with implementing it. With slow motion replays clearly being able to define what is contact and what is blatant simulation there should be nothing for honest players to worry about. Dishonest players and clubs who buy these cheats though would be quick to sort things out with match bans/fines and no player would want to be branded a known cheat for the rest of their playing career.

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Bettwsresident added 12:37 - Oct 6 I liked that Mane and Falcao got yellows in the chelsea game and there have been several others dished out this season. It seems refs are defaulting to it being a dive if the player thows himself to the ground theatrically even if the player has been tripped. I support this. Mane is our serial diver, he has got better since he appeared to be wearing flats in his first few games, but there is still some way to go. I just hope last week is a lesson to him. He missed out on a certain pen by diving. I am sure Koeman has taken him aside.. Next week will tell.

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simianmike added 13:21 - Oct 6 There is a hugely significant point which always gets missed when the diving discussion is had. The Mane incident Saturday illustrated it well. Had he stayed on his feet - which he could have - he would still have been impeded. His stride pattern would have been broken and even if he had managed to get to the ball, his balance would have been way off. However a penalty would not have been given. And that is one one of the reasons players "dive". He shouldn't have to learn to go to ground in a convincing way to get the penalty. The referees need to learn that you don't have to go down for it to be a penalty. Of course you still get the instances where a player leaps to the floor with o contact even attempted and those are the situations where retrospective action can and should take place. But the referees have a part to play too - until that happens "dives" like Manes on Saturday will not "and arguably should not" stop

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BoondockSaint added 13:55 - Oct 6 While I have seen Mane go down easy when he first got here, I think he has improved and the yellow against Chelsea was wrong-the ref realized that and gave a "make good" yellow to Falcao to even things up. However, blatant dives when there is no contact (like J-Rod did a couple of years ago) should result in multi-game bans that multiply for repeat offenders. You would think if clubs had any integrity they themselves would punish players for diving and other unsportsmanlike actions for embarrassing the club -but there is no shame in the Prem or any sports league.

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SaintBrock added 18:50 - Oct 6 You get all these idiot brain dead pundits telling the world that "he is entitled to go down if he sees a foot left in", more or less saying that diving is part and parcel of the game and perfectly acceptable. It'll never be eradicated until more refs act like our ref on Saturday, ignore all penalty appeals and red card the lot of them. Let's face it we want games to be won by superior football and goals from open play not negative defensive football and goals only from set pieces.

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Consigliere added 20:45 - Oct 6 There is much good sense in this thread, especially Bettwsresident's point. Mane has got himself a bit of a reputation for simulation and the referees have come to assume he is diving, even when he isn't (which he didn't against Chelsea). He didn't help himself though by looking round with an expression that said "Come on ref, where's my penalty?". Mane is far too skilful to need to do this sort of thing and should learn from Pelle's example, who does his best to stay on his feet despite the most egregious fouling against him.

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