Paul Pogba caught urging Luke Shaw to dive in damning Man Utd incident vs Aston Villa

Paul Pogba could find himself in hot water after being spotted encouraging cheating in Manchester United ’s game with Aston Villa.

The Red Devils’ £89m record signing played an important role in the New Year’s Day victory at Old Trafford

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s men narrowly beat Dean Smith’s high-flying Villa 2-1.

Anthony Martial headed home an opener prior to the break before Bertrand Traore equalised from close range in the second half.

Shortly after Villa’s leveller, though, Pogba was awarded a penalty after a small trip from Douglas Luiz in the box.

But one moment from the game caught the attention of some eagle-eyed fans.

During the second half, United left-back Luke Shaw made a burst into the Villa penalty area.

He evaded a challenge from Matty Cash but lost control of the ball as it was collected by goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez, much to the frustration of Pogba.

The World Cup winner was caught on camera, with Sky Sports broadcasting the match for fans at home, shouting at Shaw.

Pogba then gestures to him with his arm to go down and flop to the deck, despite Cash’s effort to win the ball being fair.

If this is an issue for people these days, we are in a terrible spot. While I hate divers and trying to cheat the game, we don't know what Pogba saw on the play. His vantage might have seen some contact, who knows.... If people paid as close attention to this crap, as much as those who really do fake a dive, well we would see a different game....

Love that Shaw did not dive!

Shaw did experience contact and if he goes down there's a good chance he gets a pen. I'll never advocate diving but it is understandable why players go down when they're contacted, especially with VAR being very (too imo) heavy-handed.

Also, the language of some of those tweets indicate Pogba dove to win the later PK which he absolutely did not.

Did Pog tell Shaw to dive? Yes, he absolutely did.

Did he dive himself afterward? Absolutely not. There was contact from Douglas Luiz and while that contact isn't what made Pogba fall, it what made him trip in his own leg and led to him falling. Seen the same kind of things in the past with Raheem Sterling and its certainly seem like this is alway punished as a penalty.

Honestly, I recently realize English media put that much more scrutiny toward foreign player while giving free pass to the English one. Like, if this was Kane telling Reguilon to do the same thing, you would see tons of article saying how smart Kane is and how Reguilon should have dived. (No hate against Kane or Spurs, it was the simplest example I could think of.)

But about this particular incident, I agree with DarthFooty that its great that Shaw did not dive, hopefully, he doesn't let Pogba or other players influence him into starting to dive.

/

@ Footy_watch It is absolutely dishonest, even if it's deemed "necessary" to get the Ref's attention. Of course, that is one reason why we are supposed to have VAR, but we all know how well they are using that system. haha