Harry Maguire should be banned – and rules need changing to stop Arsenal chaos | Football | Sport

There was a blatant instance of cheating 18 minutes and 32 seconds into Manchester United’s win over Crystal Palace. Harry Maguire and Jorgen Strand Larsen were jostling for an aerial ball after Dean Henderson’s punt forward. Maguire had both hands wrapped around Strand Larsen as the pair jostled for an aerial ball and Maguire won the header. Strand Larsen lifted his left boot to try and win the ball, while clearly being impeded from winning the header himself. Despite Strand Larsen’s boot being a good foot away from Maguire, the England centre-back held his head as if dangerous contact had been made and yelped in fake pain in the referee’s direction.

Chris Kavanagh fell for it, awarding a foul. It was a blatant and disgraceful act of simulation. The kind that should be punished retrospectively. Simulation is not just a stain on modern football; it is a plague. A national pandemic. If players were punished with significant fines or even match bans, you would soon stamp out such ridiculous behaviour. It is one of several changes the Premier League desperately needs to make, because the current product is vastly inferior to the one we had not so long ago.

If I had the power, Maguire’s deceitful incident would be reviewed by an independent panel the following day. Such blatant exploitation of the rules would be an open and shut case. It would see him given a one-match ban and a fine of a week’s wages, all to be given to charity. Were he to repeat it again later this season, it’s a three-match ban.

Let’s see you falsely hold your head in pain to win a free-kick now, Harry. Yeah, thought not mate. He’s not the only culprit, let’s make that clear. We see it time and time again across a Premier League weekend now – play is stopped to check on a player who is clearly faking a head injury. Because he knows it will pause the game. Action simply has to be taken. The deception needs to stop.

It’s not the only rule change I’d be green-lighting after the weekend just gone. The PGMOL were incredibly fortunate Chelsea scored at Arsenal just moments after they were denied a penalty in the Gunners’ 2-1 win. For the first corner, in the 44th minute, Declan Rice had both arms around Jorrel Hato.

That action, in this writer’s opinion, was a penalty in itself. His two-handed hold completely impeded the ability of Hato to meet the cross with his head. The ball then rebounded off Rice’s arm and was only prevented from going into his own net by David Raya’s sprawled right arm. did not urge referee Darren England to take a second look at the incident.

Instead, the Premier League Match Centre posted: “The referee’s call of no penalty was checked and confirmed by VAR – with it deemed there was no punishable handball offence with Rice challenging an opponent as the ball hit his arm.” Challenging an opponent, by which you mean he’s basically got Hato in a chokehold? Good process, lads. Great work!

At the next corner immediately after, before Piero Hincapie accidentally headed Reece James’ delivery beyond Raya, Rice was again committing a holding offence. The Arsenal midfielder had his back turned to the ball and his only thought was to stop Hato from winning the header. I repeat: he was not even facing the ball. It was so obviously a foul.

He got away with it because Chelsea scored. But we all know the VAR would not have intervened and awarded a penalty even if Hincapie hadn’t inadvertently equalised for Chelsea. Because the officials are incompetent and cannot be trusted to get the calls right, even with the assistance of Stockley Park.

Arsenal aren’t the only team to take advantage of holding inside the area. Far from it. But the Gunners use this tactic repeatedly and are having great success from set-pieces this season. It is just another thing the Premier League need to stamp out.

How? Well, how about if a defender is caught with both arms around an opponent at a set-piece, it’s a penalty. No ifs, no buts, no leeway. Automatic penalty. Harsh? Perhaps. Would it force teams to fix up? Absolutely. And it would help decrease these boring wrestling matches we constantly have to watch now.

Time after time, the referee stops play to have a word with a defender, and then the cameras show the exact same behaviour happening again once the ball is put into the box. It’s boring. It’s time to make the Premier League great again and cut out all this nonsense. These players deserve punishment for what they’re doing – spoiling the beautiful game.