I'm not all over the place you are just jumping to assumptions about what you think I meant. I'm just being realistic when I say I can't remember any Spurs players diving. I didn't mean in the history of Spurs which is what you seemed to grasp at. I would have thought it obvious I was talking about the current squad as that what seems to be the problem....that we are a team full of divers under Poch.
I think I'm being honest when I say I know Alli dived and Lamela may have done once or twice in the past (Not on Sunday). Don't try to pretend you don't have players that dive either. As ever the issue is what one person thinks is a dive another person thinks is a foul. Thats just the way it is. I say one person dives in the last match and the other two were contentious decisions but not dives.
Now I have pretty much the entire footballing world agreeing with me and I haven't seen anyone in the media calling out Lamela and Kane for diving Lamela in particular would be hounded if it was an obvious dive but he hasn't been. I wonder why? Maybe because most people don't think it's a dive. There's a clear image of VVD kicking him in the thigh. Did Lamela make a meal out of it yes...that isn't cheating or diving though. He just gained an advantage when he saw one, he got to the ball first and shielded it, and VVD didn't see him but if you make contact anywhere else on the pitch like that it could easily be a foul. I really don't think what I'm saying is that extreme or out there is it? If you kick a player / make contact with the opposition in the box you are asking for it really. At best VVD didn't see him and at worst it was clumsy.
God amongst men David Squires did, in his own inimitable and subtle way. There's a man with the footballing insight of a thousand Alan Shearers. And, er, the completely unbiased John Aldridge picked up on it too.
You're right though, in that most of the punditry world has ignored it completely, or agrees with you. There's a bit of pro-Tottenham hagiography going on at the minute though in some media quarters, and understandably so in some ways - you play good football, are overperforming considering your wage budget relative to the other top six, have a young team with a fair few English players - but that will lead to the dodgier aspects of your game (ie the diving and the snide tackles) being overlooked to a certain extent.
Look, I think Kane's a great footballer and tend to quite like the guy, but he also quite clearly dived/went looking for contact/fell over and made sure his trailing leg touched Karius for the first penalty decision on Sunday. Obviously our players have done the same in the past, but to completely gloss over Sunday's divey antics, as the punditry community has done, is a bit fucking irritating for Liverpool supporters, or me anyway. Any degree of contention in that decision has been regarding was it/wasn't it offside, whereas the issue of was it actually a dive has been swept under the carpet.
I understand why - England's Brave Sir Harry Kane, fine upstanding fella, ooh let's hope he helps us make it out the group stage at the World Cup and straight into the Halls of Immortality etc - but for fuck's sake pundit twats, don't just assume that because Kane goes down it's automatically a foul because Tottenham's Golden Boy would never even think about going down too easily. He may be less of a cheat than some other footballers, but he'll still do it, and the least you could do is actually analyse it with something approaching objectivity.
