Ashley Young's diving bullshit* on Saturday morning has
stirred the pot quite significantly. The current Moan Utd manager - in a position totally contrary to his lauded predecessor - has always appeared genuinely interested in cutting out diving, and has stayed true to form here. His comments are quite candid and honest. He has called for retrospective punishment for blatant offenders.
The Crystal palace Chairman, Steve Parish, amongst others, has gone further. He has called for the prescribed punishment for diving to be upped from a yellow card to a straight red. The logic being that illegally denying a goal-scoring opportunity is a straight red, so therefore illegally creating one - a penalty - should carry the same level of punishment. I agree.
As Parish quite succinctly summed up the weekend's results: Ashley Young's cheating got him a yellow card and 3 points. Palace get 0 points and lose a key player for the next game. This is why diving has to be punished more severely at the time of the offense and/or afterwards on video evidence.
* Utd's Patrice Evra started the swim meet with a clear flop in the Palace penalty area early in the 1st half. The referee was not fooled, but declined to make any further issue of it. Shortly thereafter,
Ashley Young hooked his leg around Palace's Kagisho Dikgacoi's leg, and then pulled off a spectacular wire-fighting tumble. So outrageous was the cheat, that the referee had an easy decision to issue Young with a yellow card.
Then, right on the stroke of half-time, a poor pass by Palace's Jedinak stupidly gifted the ball to Young just outside the Palace penalty area. Young latched onto the ball and burst past a Palace defender en route to goal. Dikgacoi came across to cover and
bumped Young about 2 yards outside the penalty area. Instead of staying on his feet and bearing down on the Palace goal, as Palace's Gayle had done in similar circumstances at the other just minutes before, Young pitched himself forwards to the ground, his momentum carrying him into the penalty area.
The referee whistled play dead and was, at that point, under intense pressure. The home players and fans were baying for a penalty while the Palace players were appealing that there was no foul and/or that it was outside the area. He had to rule on something as he'd stopped play. He appealed to his assistant on the sideline, who totally punted despite being in the perfect position to see that any offense at all occurred outside the area. With all this stacked up in front of him, the referee decided to give the penalty, which also meant that a red card to Dikgacoi was inevitable even though there appeared to be other Palace players in the area, making him not the "last man".
The penalty was dispatched. After that, there was no way that a 10-man Palace side was going to do be able to do anything other than play out the clock and attempt to limit the damage. Utd got a 2nd goal late on, but should be embarrassed by their inability to dominate a much inferior team, at home, with a man advantage - and also by the manner in which that man advantage was gained.
