Diving in football needs to be stamped out says Burnley manager Sean Dyche

Dyche says diving is cheating and needs to be eliminated from the game

Burnley manager Sean Dyche says more needs to be done to tackle diving in the Premier League and that he believes "no-one wants to deal with it".

So far this season just one player has been booked for diving in the Premier League after seven games - 28 were booked for simulation last season.

Dyche said he wanted to contact referees chief Mike Riley directly over the issue.

"If you are going to sort the game out, stop cheating," Dyche said.

Burnley's victory over Cardiff last weekend was criticised for the amount of time-wasting, with the ball in play for just 42 minutes of the 90.

But Dyche said tackling time-wasting should be a much lower priority than penalising diving and other forms of gamesmanship.

"Does everyone agree that the World Cup was a farce for cheating? Everyone must agree that," Dyche said.

"I don't care where you come from in the world, you must have sat there and thought, 'Oh my goodness, this has gone crazy'.

"Now in the Premier League, players dive and they don't give anything. There's no retribution afterwards, no FA charge, nothing.

"More and more people are going down again. But there's less noise about it because the referee doesn't book anyone. It's just happening because no-one wants to deal with it."

So far this season Southampton's Pierre-Emile Hojbjerg is the only Premier League player to be booked for diving, earning a second yellow card in his side's defeat at home to Leicester in August. Twenty eight bookings were issued last season, including two each for Tottenham's Dele Alli and Swansea's Martin Olsson.

"I can't believe it, the beautiful game, cheating everywhere," Dyche added. "How can this be right and no-one wants to change it?"

Dyche said if a kid cheated in his maths exam people would be furious, "yet you let them cheat on a football pitch, which could cost someone their livelihood. It's at a farcical level".

He added: "Fifa don't want to touch it, Uefa don't want to touch it, the Premier League don't want to touch it because of the shiny product.

"I got told to stop using the word [cheating] and I said absolutely not. Because that's what it is.

"The irony is you could turn it into a real positive if they said, 'We're the Premier League and we're not having it'. That's a brilliant, positive statement to millions of children around the world.

"There was one the other night, I nearly lost it. I nearly texted [referees chief] Mike Riley because it was that bad. I couldn't believe what I was seeing - four yards from the referee. I thought if you're not going to do anything about that, then this will never end."

Dyche believes his side suffer for their honest approach, adding: "The irony is we've not had a penalty in the Premier League for 16 months. The referee is now looking for the dive to pre-suppose he's been fouled."

In the summer the FA extended its powers to punish simulation retrospectively and a spokesman pointed out that players can now be charged with "successful deception of a match official".

The Premier League declined to comment.