Chris Sutton says £47m Man United player has really let himself down

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VAR may be in place in English football now, but diving is still an issue across the game.

Indeed, speaking on BBC 606, Chris Sutton has been discussing some of the worst dives in English football over the past week, and he highlighted a few incidents involving Manchester United.

Sutton picked out both Destiny Udogie and Alejandro Garnacho’s dives at Old Trafford on Sunday as being poor, but he said that the worst offender from the last week was Bruno Fernandes who completely and utterly bought his penalty against Wigan in the FA Cup a week ago.

Sutton blasts Fernandes for diving

The pundit shared his verdict on the £47m man’s antics.

“The winner of this week’s Simulation Game, Udogie went down too easily, with Garnacho it’s a no-no, but the winner, this is so easy, he has previous, the Portuguese pied-piper, Bruno Fernandes, just stop it, this was a pathetic dive, you are so much better than that, the captain of Man United and throwing yourself around like that, you’re better than that Bruno Fernandes, stop it,” Sutton said.

It works

As embarrassing as it is to watch these players dive in these moments, especially against teams like Wigan, we can’t help but admit that this act of deception can work well.

These days you are best off going down in the box if you feel even the smallest contact because you’re likely to be given a penalty.

It’s not sporting, it’s not honest and it’s not entertaining, but it is an effective way to carve out easy goalscoring opportunities, and it’s proven to work time and time again.

This isn’t applicable to the FA Cup, but with VAR in place in the Premier League, diving should be clamped down upon, but, for some reason, these soft penalties keep being awarded every week.