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It’s the subject that simply refuses to go away within English football at the moment and for Tottenham Hotspur winger Gareth Bale, he’d do well to pick up a couple of newspapers of late. In a series of weeks that have seen the issue of diving hop straight back up to the top of football’s agenda of malaise, you would have thought that the Welshman would have the nous to avoid a complete PR disaster.

Indeed, while the actions of Liverpool’s Luis Suarez has catalyzed a whole catalogue of fierce debate over the practice of simulation, Bale has played his own part in ensuring it continues to produce column inches. And a further contentious tumble on international duty against Scotland, has shot Bale straight into the spectrum of chief suspects.

But the issue for Bale isn’t one of personal integrity. It’s one that has the ability to cause both himself and his side some serious problems later along the line this season.

The issue of diving isn’t anything new on these shores. As with so many other issues in football, there is something very topical about the way it manages to creep up onto the footballing radar. As the fickle finger of the Premier League spins round on a never ending basis, talk about top flight thespians will usually subside and make way for the two-footed tackle debate or the flailing elbow argument.

But things feel different this time. For many people, Spurs fans included, there was a sense of poetic justice in seeing Luis Suarez get planted over by Norwich’s Leon Barnett for a stonewall penalty, only for referee Mike Jones to wave his claims away. The proverb “you reap what you sow”, has been wheeled out often in the past few weeks and in fairness, it certainly rings true to a certain extent.

But as the Suarez debate rumbles on, it seems to have reopened another and the school of thought that Premier League referees are beginning to judge the Uruguayan on reputation, rather than an incident on it’s own merits, is one that should cause equal cause for concern. And it’s one that Gareth Bale in particular, should give more than a moment’s thought to.

Fans of teams who have been on the receiving end of one of his tumbles (Villa and Arsenal supporters, take a stand), may be happy to dispute this, but Bale bestows a more polished public profile than Luis Suarez. A modest, humble talent, there are no bans for racial abuse or red cards for blatant hand ball on his resume. But if he continues to fall to the ground under little to no contact, that will all count for diddly squat.

Bale has already faced several allegations of diving and despite his claims to the contrary, his justifications for going down easily, hardly endear himself to a wider audience.

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Following critique over his penalty winning dive in the 5-2 defeat against Arsenal last season, Bale responded that his art is more injury prevention, than diving:

“It’s annoying. You have people flying in at you, it’s not really diving, you’re trying to get out of the way of the challenge if anything,” the Welshman said last year.

“It’s a difficult one. You can see why people say you’re diving but at the end of the day I’d rather dive than get hurt.”

While Bale’s viewpoint maintains a certain amount of gravitas, it’s impossible to skirt round the viewpoint that he has more than a tendency to go down to easily. The wider debate surrounding simulation can be extended to very specific and technical instances and whether by launching himself over a full-back’s trailing leg at regular intervals is any better, is highly disputable.

But the stonewall acts of cheating are simply unforgivable and his fall in Spurs’ 2-0 victory over Aston Villas was totally unacceptable. The sight of watching Bale go down under thin air as he pre-empted a kick from Brad Guzan that never came, was really quite hard to watch. It gets worse every time you see it and if anyone was still to doubt the Welshman’s tendency to dabble in football’s darkest of arts, they can surely be in no doubt now.

Although, it’s not just his own morality that he’s damaging by going to ground like that. If Bale waltzes into the penalty area and is hacked down against Chelsea this weekend but the referee waves him away, then Spurs fans will be left with a Luis Suarez situation all of their own. Premier League referees must stay subjective, but does human nature dictate that when they see him go down, his fall against Villa will come into their head? It shouldn’t, but it could well do.

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Even if referees are wrong to not judge each situation on their own merits, but Bale shouldn’t even be putting them in a position for that to become an issue. If he goes down in the penalty area against Roberto Di Matteo’s side on Saturday, you can bet your mortgage that his side will be screaming dive regardless of what happened. Bale’s behavior has only played into their hands.

Regardless of whether Shaun Maloney has claimed that his feeble contact with Gareth Bale constituted a penalty last week, it remains a woefully soft decision. And the problem is, with every ridiculous tumble the Welshman is taking, he is subjecting himself to forensic scrutiny in each incident.

Fans who frequent White Hart Lane love watching Gareth Bale for his barnstorming runs and his gifted ability – not for his acting skills. And when his behavior is set to put his side in jeopardy of getting a fair run, fans have the right to demand he cleans up his act. And fast.

What do you think about Gareth Bale’s antics for Spurs and Wales? Let me know what you think on Twitter: follow @samuel_antrobus and let me know if you think it’s time AVB sorted the Welshman out. 

According to reports in the Daily Mail, Tottenham Hotspur face a battle to keep manager Mauricio Pochettino with Real Madrid ready to step up their pursuit of the 45-year-old, and Spurs fans have been quick to have their say on the rumour.

The Daily Mail says the La Liga giants are weighing up a move to bring the Argentine boss to Spain at the end of the season with Zinedine Zidane’s men struggling this term – they are currently 19 points behind Barcelona in the Spanish top flight and were knocked out of the Copa del Rey by Leganes during the week.

The report adds that while Pochettino is tempted by the opportunity of working with Real, the north London outfit wouldn’t be willing to let him go easily – especially as he has no release clause in his contract.

Tottenham supporters took to social media to give their thoughts on the story, and while one simply said “he’ll go”, another said “this will test Poch’s loyalty”.

Here is just a selection of the Twitter reaction…

Wayne Rooney has signed a new contract with Manchester United worth a reported £300,000 a week. The club is happy, the great freckled one is happy, the Stretford End and everyone involved at Paul Stretford’s End are happy, even the jaded, snarking curmudgeons are happy, such are many plentiful examples the situation provides for their life force enhancing belief that modern football is at the root of everything rotten and evil on this ghastly forsaken burning rock of nothingness we fool ourselves into thinking a home. Everyone is happy.

And yet somehow the sneaking suspicion that we’ve all been had lingers like the bad aftertaste of a Casillero del Diablo.

So, in another life, what else could United have spent 300k a week and 14m a year on instead of Wayne Rooney’s inevitable second hair transplant?

1. Pay two people £150k a week to play in midfield

It may have escaped those without the finely tuned nose of a true detective, but I’ll let you in on a secret – United have a problem in midfield. Despite the fact Rooney often spends huge swaths of games in a sort of self created auxiliary holding left back role, he’s not midfielder. Yet. Whilst the ridiculous valuation of footballers may threaten to become an elaborate satirical performance piece on the housing crisis (or perhaps it’s vice versa?) 300k is still a huge amount. You can still pick up a top of the range playmaker (only two previous owners) for a cool £150k. Even in the trendy deluxe diminutive Spanish model, David Silva and Juan Mata both command in the region. Perhaps get them in a collectable set? Buy two and get a novelty Marouane Fellaini thrown in for free! Ilkay Gundogan is on a paltry, almost insulting mid level banker’s salary of £25k a week. Why not buy a whole team of him?  Some of them can play in defense (which, don’t tell anyone, is also a problem.) Sheeeyyyt, United could’ve caved into Paul Pogba’s salary demands thirteen times and still had change for an Ilkay Way.

2. Expand Old Trafford to compete with City. 

Manchester City are now the biggest club in Manchester. Manuel Pellegrini has spoken, and in every sense but the actual words he used and what they mean, he’s right. So how will United compete with City and their imposing haul of 3 league titles once their new 60,000 capacity expansion makes the Etihad the second largest club stadium in the country, behind only, erm, Manchester United? Well, by expanding their own stadium of course. Perhaps with an exclusive corporate helipad and a state of the art pitch level retracting jumbotron. One architect has already proposed cramming ticketless fans onto the roof! To ignore such genius would be folly.

3. Do a Bayern and give back to the fans.

With it’s increasingly rampant propensity for evil, PR is now very important to football. Few top clubs can escape the perception that their working class roots are being eroded in favor of big business by an army of invisible Tony Blairs all desperate to play head tennis with Kevin Keegan. Bayern Munich can certainly try though, with their cheap tickets, safe standing and wily initiative to shame not only our football, but also our exorbitant pricing by buying out Arsenal’s away allocation as a goodwill gesture to their fans. Gone are the days of xenophobic ‘bantz!’ and giggling at rude sounding names, these days any football fan worth their salt wants to be German. With this in mind, United could claw back some respectability for our feeble Unterliga by reimbursing 26,000 of their lowest tier season ticket holders as a show of good faith. Anyone who spends a whole season singing songs about David Moyes deserves some mercy.

This would be brilliant, and is quite comfortably the least likely option on this list.

4. Hire thousands of teachers, nurses and soldiers.

Barely a contract renewal or transfer window goes by without some enlightened altruistic sole lamenting the plight of our underfunded public sector betters. “Just imagine how many teachers/nurses/soldiers you could pay with such and such’s salary” they say, curiously never implying we could up their wage substantially, but merely that we could hire more of them, at the same rate. To this end, United could hire thousands of nurses, soldiers and teachers, at the going rate, to aid the physios, guard the stadium and teach Rooney the many available alternatives in the English language to “obviously”

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5. Buy an MLS Franchise/Sponsor a Llama/Help pay off their debt.

You know, something daft like that. Lolz.

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Tottenham Hotspur defender Kyle Walker was forced to shut down his Twitter account after Spurs fans berated him over yesterday’s defeat to Chelsea, as reported by the Daily Mail.

@kyle28walker was bombarded with abusive tweets from his own fans after his mediocre performance in the London derby that saw rivals Chelsea come from 2-1 down to win 4-2 in the second half.

Walker was at fault for the final Chelsea goal in injury time and it seems that despite his full commitment to the club, some sections of online Spurs fans needed to vent their anger.

“Would love to know what I’m doing so different I give 100 per cent every game and still u (have) something to say I’m 22 and learning #embarrassing,” Walker wrote before deleting his account.

“If I said what I thought to these people I would get done humans make mistakes it was 90mins and I though(t it was) a foul end off (sic)!!!!”

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All bases will be covered in the squad but Travis Head could have an increasing part to play with the ball

Andrew McGlashan09-Jan-2023Using three frontline quicks remains an option for Australia on their tour of India with Pat Cummins keeping an opening mind about the balance of the side that they will need.The last time they won in India, on the 2004 tour, their bowling attack was based around the three-pronged pace of Glenn McGrath, Jason Gillespie and Michael Kasprowicz alongside the spin of Shane Warne and then some part-time overs.Australia have the resources to go with a similar shape of team this time although the emergence of Cameron Green has given them greater flexibility. However, Green is expected to miss the first Test in Nagpur due to his broken finger so the selectors will need to decide whether to stick with the two-quick, two-spinner method employed against South Africa or back what is traditionally Australia’s strength in pace bowlers.Nagpur has not hosted a Test since 2017 and Australia’s previous game there was the VCA Stadium’s maiden fixture in 2008 when Jason Krejza took 12 wickets in the match on debutRelated

• Starc ruled out of first India Test, Australia select four spinners in 18-member squad

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• Australia's summer: Cummins has everything he needs, but ageing side has tougher tests ahead

• Australia don't make big spin gains at SCG ahead of India tour

Mitchell Starc is also unlikely to be fit for the first Test – and things may yet be tight for the second in Delhi – due to his broken finger suffered at the MCG, but Josh Hazlewood’s impressive return from injury in Sydney, where he was threatening with reverse swing, means he could get more opportunity than presented itself on last year’s trips to Pakistan and Sri Lanka where he only played once.Scott Boland was left out of the final Test against South Africa and has yet to play a game overseas, but it could be an option to field him, Cummins and Hazlewood together unless the pitch is so persuasive of including another spinner.”Potentially,” Cummins said when asked about playing the extra quick. “[When] Cam Green bats at six you’ve kind of got three quick bowlers which is a bit of luxury as it is. [Josh] showed his class out there. No qualms picking him, you know what you are going to get and it’s quality. Each game in India we might need to chop it up slightly differently, maybe one game it’s three quicks and another it’s one quick. We’ll get over there and see.”Australia’s second spinner at the SCG was Ashton Agar who went wicketless through 22 overs in his first home Test, nearly 10 years after making his debut. Agar is assured of his place on the India tour, and Australia are keen on having a left-arm spinner in their attack, but Mitchell Swepson and Todd Murphy are also in the mix for the tour.Travis Head could get plenty of work with the ball•Getty Images

However, there is an option where Australia rely on a combination of their part-time spinners to supplement Nathan Lyon, with Travis Head’s development of his offspin making him a viable option. Head has taken seven wickets at 13.99 in his last seven Tests having not struck before then.”It’s a real option,” Cummins said. “Think the squad will have all possibilities there. Really comfortable [with the part-time spinners] especially Trav, he’s a slightly different offspin bowler to Nathan, a bit flatter, which could be really helpful over there. Probably underbowled him in this game so he’ll be a big part over there.”Away from the bowling, the batting options for the tour are likely to include Peter Handscomb, who was drafted into the SCG squad when Marcus Harris was released to play BBL. He is the leading Sheffield Shield run-scorer this season with 571 runs at 81.57 and coach Andrew McDonald said he was unlucky not to originally be selected for Sydney when Matt Renshaw was preferred.”He’s a huge chance over in India, he’s played really well in Bangladesh, India he’s been there before,” Cummins said. “He’s earned the right by scoring a lot of runs in Shield cricket. I’m sure come selection time he’ll be there or thereabouts. Always nice having a right-hander as well, we’ve got plenty of left-handers.”The squad is expected to be named later this week and will depart at the end of the month. There are plans for a short training camp in Sydney with the tour itself not including a warm-up match before the opening Test in Nagpur from February 9.

Club captain stands down for family reasons after struggling for form in two seasons

ESPNcricinfo staff22-May-2022Peter Handscomb, Middlesex’s club captain, is standing down from his role, and will not return to complete the 2022 season following his involvement with next month’s Australia A tour of Sri Lanka.A statement from the club confirmed that Handscomb would be returning to Australia after the Sri Lanka tour for family reasons, and that Tim Murtagh would be taking over as club captain in both the four-day and 50-over formats.”We would like to thank Pete for all he has contributed to the club throughout his time with us,” Alan Coleman, Middlesex’s head of men’s performance cricket. “He is a fabulous bloke to have around the dressing room and has led us with distinction this year on the field.”He is a natural leader and inspires those around him to perform, and many of the younger players within our squad have learned an enormous amount from him during the time he’s been at the club.”Despite leading Middlesex to the top of the LV= County Championship Division Two – a position that he helped to consolidate with an unbeaten 39 in their six-wicket win over Durham at Lord’s on Sunday – Handscomb’s own form has been intermittent, with a solitary half-century in five appearances this season, to go with his average of 17.46 in his seven matches in 2021.The news follows the confirmation that Shaheen Shah Afridi, Middlesex’s other overseas player, will not be returning to the club this season either, due to Pakistan’s busy international schedule. The club confirmed that they were in negotiations for a replacement top-order batter for the remainder of the season, and were hopeful of making an announcement in the near future.”I’ve really enjoyed my time here at Middlesex and it’s been a pleasure to have played with such a great bunch of blokes,” Handscomb said. “To have started the season in the manner we have is testament to the amount of hard work the playing group and coaches have put in, and I wish Middlesex every success for the remainder of the season and moving forwards.”It’s been an honour to have been able to call Lord’s my home, and my thanks go to everyone at the Club for their support in allowing me to head home to spend time with my family after my international commitments with Australia A.”

Join us for updates, analysis and colour from the first day of the Brisbane Test

Varun Shetty15-Jan-2021*Most recent entry will appear at the top, please refresh your page for the latest updates. All times are local.

5.30pm local/1pm IST: Stumps

Australia will be pleased with the day. It didn’t begin particularly well, with two wickets, but India gave them a sniff by dropping Labuschagne early and he’s anchored a positive innings on the day one. India were hamstrung with their best two bowlers going out, and the new faces might have felt like they were doing a decent job until Australia flipped the pressure on them through flowing knocks from Smith, Wade, Green and Paine right at the end. By the end of the day, India looked like a fading team, and the hosts have capitalised on that. India have also ended the day a bowler short. It could be a long day tomorrow.

4.30pm local/12pm IST: The pitch

Getty Images

It’s been a difficult pitch to assess from afar. Natarajan’s two wickets were deliveries that kicked off the surface and got big on two pull shots. The only real instance of that any time previously was the delivery off which Labuschagne was dropped earlier in the day. And these all came off different bowlers, and form differing lines. So what do you put it down to? The range of pace? The likelihood of a bowler getting it to grip? Cracks in the pitch? And in that case, the cracks would have to be on both the left- and right-handers’ sides. Which sounds far fetched so early in a Test. Perhaps the only characteristic that an be gauged confidently is its slow nature.

3.56pm local/11.26am IST