'Booking players early could deter diving' says Wenger

Following our exit from the UEFA Champions League on Tuesday night Arsene Wenger suggested a way which could prevent players from diving so often. Some would say he's a sore loser (maybe, but I'd call him passionate about the team's success) but I think he makes a great point.

His comments on the Arsenal website (opens in new tab) come after Roben was up to his theatricals once again over our two legs against Bayern Munich.

He argues players who are deemed to have dived by the referee should be booked on the first instance. This would result in the player then being cautious about attempting to dive again as they could face being sent off. So should this be trialled in the modern game?

At the moment you do see players fall to the ground looking for a penalty and the referee waves play on and tells the player to get up. If the ref believes they have dived then they need to be more ruthless and actually book them, otherwise this system just won't work.

I think it's a great idea personally (though I'm not sure the likes of Ronaldo and Robben would be so keen) but the referees already have the difficult task of judging what is a dive and there's always a risk they can make the wrong decisions. Players may be wrongfully booked or subsequently sent off when they are truly fouled but a referee may have seen it as a dive.

Would this then be a call for TV replays for referees to use and make a second decision on? Maybe that's something further down the line...

Anyhow life goes on and we now turn attentions back to the Premier League with derby game coming up this weekend against Tottenham. Hopefully the squad can pick themselves up after what was a mammoth task against the present European champions. Ozil will miss this one with a hamsring injury (and the next month at least!) after sustained the injury in the opening minutes of the Bayern match on Tuesday, while Ramsey is said to be struggling to be fit enough to return this weekend as well.

Ronaldo often faces criticism for diving and cheating.