SAM Allardyce has angrily rejected claims he has ‘encouraged his players to dive’ after insisting Martin Olsson’s alleged explosive comments were ‘lost in translation’.

Olsson was reported to have told a Swedish newspaper he ‘dived’ for the winning penalty against Burnley last weekend and to have suggested the squad were advised to go down due to referee Mike Dean’s reputation of awarding spot kicks.

Ahead of tomorrow’s Premier League trip to Portsmouth though, the Rovers boss has refuted the allegations and insisted Rovers’ young Swede was ‘stitched up’ by the media.

He revealed he had dealt with Olsson internally after ‘going down too easily’ and for ‘naively’ speaking to the press but was adamant Olsson’s words had been twisted.

He said: “It is something we have dealt with and we move on. We coach our players to play football and we don’t coach them to dive. We have had one booking all season for simulation and I think that shows what sort of a club we are.

“We all know it wasn’t a penalty, we all know he has gone over easily anticipating a challenge that was going to be made, and Martin has been told it was not the right thing to do.

“I would agree he has been naive. We have talked to him about it and he has been sucked in by someone he has considered a good journalist in Sweden and he has stitched him up basically.

“Martin was taking some time in Sweden to see how his mum was, who has not been that well, and he has picked up the phone to a journalist who has tried to extract something out of him and it has come back over here and been blown out of all proportion.

“In the end we know it was the wrong decision, but there has not been too much made about the wrong decisions we had against us that was a great goal scored by Martin Olsson before the penalty. The penalty situation wouldn’t have happened then.”

Allardyce though did confirm he had spoken to his players about Mike Dean’s style of refereeing before the East Lancashire derby - but insisted it was no different to his approach before every game.

“I speak about every referee to my players,” he said. “My concern to the players was warning them Mike Dean gives more penalties than anyone else and not to give one away. That is typical in some media areas they will suggest that I suggested that he dived down, which wasn’t the case.

“I actually don’t think Mike Dean had a bad game. He had no chance of seeing that any other way than being a penalty from his position. I don’t see what other decision he could have given unless he had the view of the cameras after.”

Allardyce also accused the British media of blowing the incident out of proportion after pointing to flashpoints elsewhere this week that have not been highlighted.

He said: “We are done to on many, many occasions, which we go through the right channels to point out, and many, many times we have had something that has gone against us that shouldn’t have been and this time we have had something we shouldn’t have done.

“There is an old kaboodle because in translation he has said he has dived but hasn’t said that. He should not have spoke to the press he should have left it where it was and it would have kept the criticism away from us and away from him.

“In the end this is not a one off, it happens every day off the week. It happened in the Barcelona versus Arsenal game with the Fabregas penalty but there won’t be the kaboodle we have had over Martin Olsson.”

Meanwhile Allardyce confirmed he was interested in signing Lens striker Aruna Dindane, but only if the price was right.