What the hell is going on here?

If Platini had a vendetta against Arsene Wenger then this is surely it.

As well as being a complete disgrace, it is extremely sad. It’s as if this is the first dive ever made in football.

And I hate to bring this up, but if this was an English player – I don’t know, someone like Steven Gerrard maybe, or Wayne Rooney then I don’t think this would even become an issue. Michael Owen is another player who is a saint when it comes to these things. But it’s okay if he’s ‘winning’ a penalty against Argentina…

It’s just a huge amount of hypocrisy from everyone which is just pathetic.

When I think about the punishment Eduardo might face, along with the already high-profile incident then I’m just so riled. And here’s why…

It’s Unfair

The fact is diving has been in football for years now and nothing has been done to stop it. Disgraceful acts of diving from players like Gerrard, Rooney and Owen have happened in England internationals yet these instances were swept under the carpet. I remember one from Gerrard (against Estonia was it?) which was one of the worse dives I had ever seen. But hey, they’re English so it wasn’t a dive, it was being clever.

It’s a shame Theo Walcott wasn’t on the pitch and dived on Wednesday night.

We’d have a peaceful life then.

The Bigger Picture

I’m not condoning diving but let’s look at the bigger picture here. This was a 5-1 aggregate win over Celtic. The penalty didn’t make that much of a difference overall and certainly didn’t effect the result, however hard you want to argue to the contrary.

But how about going back to that faithful night at Old Trafford when Shrek dived over Sol Campbell’s leg to ‘earn’ a penalty and effectively end our unbeaten run in the Premier League. That incident still makes me sick to my stomach, and was a much bigger game then the Champions League qualifier. That one dive essentially ended our title challenge that season.

We could even talk about the valid tackle Gael Clichy made in that Birmingham game where we conceded a last minute penalty and Eduardo broke his leg. That decision f*cked us over as well. In fact, there’s been a lot of big and important games penalty decisions have gone against us, but nothing was done about it.

It’s Eduardo

I have to say that the incident against Celtic was the first time I’ve seen Eduardo do anything like dive before. So why is he being singled out now for it? If diving isn’t acceptable in the game, then the authorities should have done something a hell of a lot sooner. If diving was punished then Eduardo would have thought twice about doing it.

If this whole thing was happening to a serial diver like Cristiano Ronaldo or Steven Gerrard then fair enough, but Eduardo? Come on! What has he done to deserve this treatment? The guy’s come back from a horrific injury and been out of the game for almost a year.

And the guy who did it to him got off scot free.

Nice.

Arsene Wenger’s Stance On Cheating

Arsene has always been an advocate of helping referees.

He says that technology should be used to help officials who can make mistakes. That’s not a criticism, but a fact of human nature. Referees will make mistakes. Surely a guy behind a TV screen who has a benefit of a replay can instantly tell the referee on the pitch if it’s a right or wrong call.

And if this was implemented and players knew that every decision was based on replay evidence then they would stop cheating and diving, because they would know they wouldn’t get away with it.

UEFA and FIFA govern football, the richest and most popular sport in the world. They have a responsibility to ensure the game is played fairly and in the right spirit and they have had the means to enforce this. Other sports like Rugby and Tennis are light years ahead of us in this respect so the governing bodies have absolutely no excuse.

What’s the point of retrospective punishments when ‘the damage has been done’ so to speak?

Surely it’s more important to eradicate the problem rather than punish it?

There is absolutely no point in what UEFA are doing. Because if it’s the Champions League Final and a player goes into a 50:50 with the goalkeeper then he doesn’t give a sh*t if his dive wins the match is he? If it’s the choice between winning Europe’s biggest competition and a 2 game ban then I know what every player would choose.

People only remember the winners.

If you want an example of how UEFA shouldn’t be run and how stupid they actually are, then this is it. Common sense just goes out the window.

You can’t help being optimistic over the summer.

There’s no football being played, and you believe the hype. Wenger will always talk about being title challengers and will never admit we’re just fighting for a Champions League place.

That’s not the way to sell Arsenal the brand.

You can always sell the future because the future never comes.

And before we sold Toure, I was optimistic as the next Arsenal fan.

We brought it Vermaelen which was great because defensively we would be stronger. But the problem is that we forgot that Arsene has a strange policy on first team players who don’t start. Wenger doesn’t like upsetting his stars, so if he can’t guarantee them a starting place week in week out then he’ll sell them, even if they’re still good enough to play for the club.

That’s why we don’t have strength in depth in the squad, and not enough to win the league.

Alex Ferguson, Rafa Benitez and even Jose Mourinho aren’t bothered about this dilemma. In midfield, Manchester United alone have Carrick, Anderson, Scholes, Giggs, Nani, Valencia, Park, Fletcher and Hargreaves to pick from every week. That’s 9 midfield options, and that’s not including youth players like Gibson and Welbeck who make appearances now and then or even new signing Obertan. Ferguson has no problem rotating players and they all seem happy enough.

How often have you heard Wenger say he couldn’t guarantee players first team football anymore?

Players who have left recently and in my opinion would still have been excellent squad members were Gilberto, Diarra, Senderos, Lauren, Freddie, Edu and Pires. Yes, some of them are getting on a bit but what’s wrong with keeping players around to fill in and help the young players along? I don’t want them to play every week, but United have proved with Giggs and Scholes that they still have a positive purpose. Just look at Wenger’s current prodigy. Cesc Fabregas is undoubtedly Arsene’s best achievement in the current squad but who was he training and playing alongside? He played with players quite rightly regarded as Arsenal legends. He grew up alongside Dennis Bergkamp, Thierry Henry, Patrick Vieira, Robert Pires – the invincibles squad in fact.

I realise that players like Toure, Adebayor, Hleb and Diarra wanted to leave but I find it ridiculous when Wenger comes out and said there’s nothing he can do to make them stay. Of course players have more power than ever these days but you rarely see this kind of thing happen at Manchester United. They even managed to keep Ronaldo a couple of more seasons longer than he wanted and even then when he did leave it was for a world record breaking £80 million.

Of course, the fact we have to sell ever year is why this happens every summer.

But this summer, we’ve sold Adebayor and Toure, and Senderos is on his way to Everton. Traore is believe to be wanted by Birmingham and Nasri is injured. In response, we’ve brought in Vermaelen.

Last year, it was the same story. We lost Lehmann, Gilberto, Hleb, Flamini, Diarra, Hoyte and Senderos (again). And in response, we brought in Nasri, Silvestre, Bischoff and Aaron Ramsey.

No wonder why we’re all so excited about Jack Wiltshire.

They boy undoubtedly has fantastic potential, and even I was caught up in the euphoria after watching The Emirates Cup at the weekend. Arsenal fans have been going crazy about him, although Arsene has come out and warned us we shouldn’t put too much pressure on him or expect too much.

But ironically, Wenger’s the reason why there is so much pressure.

Partly it’s because of his obvious talent, but it’s also because we want him to play now. We look at the current Arsenal squad, and think his boy should be starting. Yes, it’s a testament to his ability but it is also down to strength of the current squad.

We also want him to start because we believe we need him.