SEAN Dyche believes diving in football has now become "normalised" and thinks more questions need to be asked in order to put a stop to it.

A total of 23 players received yellow cards for diving last season in the Premier League, a figure that may rise next season with the introduction of VAR.

Dyche has previously said that he wanted to contact referees chief Mike Riley to discuss the matter directly.

"It is actually diving; cheating - that’s what they don’t like. Gamesmanship, clever team play, organisation, they’re all things that go on in every sport," said Dyche.

"Everyone looks for the tiniest thing to make you better, so that’s different. When you talk about blatant cheating, that’s a whole different ball game.

"If you go through the games in the Premier League and analysed every challenge, it’s actually quite low. The problem is that it’s enhanced to a level that it’s not almost nothing anymore.

"Every single game it goes on. That cannot be good for the children watching sport. Gamesmanship you learn that. You shouldn’t be learning cheating."

Patrick Bamford received a two-game ban for his role in Aston Villa's Anwar El Ghazi being shown a red card in the Championship match at Elland Road.

Dyche highlighted how a dive could result in a penalty which makes a club lose millions of pounds if the penalty is scored and the game is lost.

"They still aren’t doing anything about it. How many players have been banned this year because of diving? One is it? Bamford gets banned for two games for simulation," added Dyche.

"That’s simulating a violent moment, I presume that’s why he got banned.

"Now if you simulated someone touching you and you go down for a penalty; a team could lose £100 million and yet there’s no ban. I find that peculiar. That’s probably it in a nutshell.

"Is anyone going to do anything with what’s going on in the game? It looks to me, no they’re not. That’s a concern to me for the bigger picture, but it’s really for the kids.

"I have a son who plays football and I like to think he’d be confused if he saw my team rolling around. I have my own moral standards for my own family.

"I’m on about clever play and gamesmanship, that’s always there – I’m on about the blatant stuff. We had one at Bournemouth and they didn’t even show it on any media stream. "That’s how normalised it is. We’re just that used to seeing it, it apparently doesn’t matter anymore.

"There was a certain centre half in front of us the other week and they had four minutes of pressure after that. It should have been a free-kick and a yellow card, they had four minutes of pressure.

"The ref did nothing, fourth official is four yards away – they did nothing. No one in the media questions it either."