Football’s law makers like to meddle. The problem is they do it in areas that tend not to need any meddling. Like around handball and offside and other places that were doing just fine as they were.

So here’s a tip for the meddlers at the International Football Association Board. Meddle somewhere that needs it. Meddle in a way that would be meaningful and important and in a way that would actually help the game.

Please meddle with cheating. Please do something that would spare us from the embarrassment of grown men behaving like children in a bid to get other players booked and sent off. Yes, please meddle there.

Because football at the top level really needs it.

It needs a route through which players such as Alexis Mac Allister and Gabriel Magalhaes can be properly punished, shamed and embarrassed for what they did during Sunday’s otherwise fabulous Premier League game between Liverpool and Arsenal at Anfield.

It needs a deterrent. It needs greater power to match referees and greater leeway for retrospective punishment.

In a way, it is handy that there was one from each team this time. That way, we can be spared the usual accusations of bias that tend to come when footballers are called out for their sins.

Here, live on TV, Gabriel and Mac Allister were both as bad as each other. One in each half, clear as day.

Arsenal defender Gabriel was poked in the chest early on by Aleksandar Isak and went down holding his face. Then, much later, Liverpool’s Mac Allister was brushed by the forehead of Noni Madueke and did likewise.

Neither fooled referee Andy Madley. Both were told to get up and get on with the game. On TV, Sky Sports analysts Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher didn’t hold back.

‘Embarrassing’ was the word they both chose. Neville to describe Gabriel and Carragher as a way of calling out Mac Allister.

But this type of chicanery is more than that. We see it from lots of players and we see it all the time. It’s not just embarrassing. It goes much deeper. It’s malevolent. It’s low. It’s pre-meditated. It’s wicked. 

Short of dark subjects such as spitting and leg-breaking tackles, I can’t think of much worse things on a football field than pretending to have a head or facial injury when you actually haven’t.

So where IFAB need to get involved – where they need to ‘meddle’ – is simple. They must increase football’s powers to punish.

On the field and in the moment, referees can issue yellow cards for simulation and for cheating. Players can be booked for exaggerating contact (Mac Allister) or pretending contact has been made with a certain area of the body when it hasn’t (Gabriel).

But why is there no power – at least in occasional and exceptional circumstances - to issue a red card?

Gabriel and Mac Allister appeared to be trying to get their opponents sent off. Would they do it if they knew the match referee at least had the option of showing them the red card instead?

Very probably not.

So, yes, IFAB could have a meddle there.

Retrospectively, meanwhile, we need greater leeway for action.

Under a law passed a decade ago, a player can theoretically be banned by a review panel for two-games for ‘successful deception of a match official’. However the reality is that the initiative has largely been superseded by VAR and was only really used for players diving to try and win penalties anyway.

In terms of the nonsense we witnessed at Anfield on Sunday – and indeed see on a reasonably regular basis around the country – there is very little recourse once the game is over so once again a possible deterrent has been removed from the equation.

Cheating of this nature currently looks and feels like a risk worth taking and that is what must change.

Here, it was interesting to hear Liverpool manager Andoni Iraola suggest afterwards that he must start telling his players to go down under contact. He was talking about Isak’s refusal to buckle under a clear penalty area shirt tug from Jurrien Timber.

That’s an important issue, too. Players should not be punished for their honesty. A foul is a foul, regardless of the reaction. VAR should have awarded a penalty.

But here on an otherwise fine day for the Premier League, another known and rather ugly blot on the landscape grew larger.

The threat of red cards for cheating and – if that fails - punishments handed down by review. That’s the kind of meddling we should all be on board with.