Pulis: Suarez Should Get Three Games for Dive

"I've been on about and banging the drum about people who fall over and in one incident in the second half it's an embarrassment. The FA should be looking at this. Give him three games [banned] and he will stop falling over."

Tony Pulis is not a man that's long on self-awareness or insight, and after his Stoke side bruised their way to another scoreless draw, he was somehow of the opinion that it was his team who got the short end of the stick with Lee Mason's decisions, and that Luis Suarez should be given a retroactive ban for a dive in the second half as Liverpool was chasing a winner.

Highlighting the fall isn't necessarily out of order if we were in a vacuum, as it's pretty clear that Suarez first slipped and then embellished the loss of footing as though he was fouled. Given his history and reputation and etc., it wouldn't have been surprising had he been booked for the incident, and while it would have been a joke in the context of what Mason was and wasn't handing out cards for today, it wouldn't have been an awful decision.

But to call for a retroactive ban for Suarez, who was hacked down all day by Pulis' squad--who, the manager claims, "were disappointed with the amount of bookings that (they) got"--is farcical at best, and does nothing other than to pick on the easiest target going in the Premier League. The treatment of Suarez doesn't excuse the incident at all, but you can't help but be stunned by the lack of awareness of a man whose players thrive on foul play and malice, and then are coached to feign ignorance of intent, surround the referee in numbers, and waste time at every opportunity.

Diving/simulation/whatever is no good, and it's embarrassing to see. It's embarrassing to see anyone do it, let alone Liverpool players. And having "concern about players falling over and putting enormous pressure on the referees" is admirable enough, so long as it's not pointed solely at foreign players, which we've seen plenty of in the past few weeks. But coming from the mouth of a man who turns a blind eye to the type of thuggish behavior we saw from his team today (and every day), it's little more than false moralizing in an effort to make himself and his squad come across as victims when they're doing their own part to take away from the integrity of the game.