Arsène Wenger contemplated the great diving debate and couldn’t resist a loaded joke ahead of the north London derby this weekend. “I remember there were tremendous cases here when foreign players did it but I must say the English players have learned very quickly and they might even be the masters now.”

On the back of a contentious match last weekend when Tottenham’s Dele Alli was booked for simulation and Harry Kane accused of diving by Liverpool’s Virgil van Dijk, Wenger insisted that the issue is one that needs attention. “We have to get diving out of the game,” he said. “I don’t tell my players to dive. I don’t encourage them to dive at all.

“You want your players to be intelligent. Sometimes they have played a little bit with the rules, they make more of it on the penalty case. Every striker will do that. How far can you go? That is down to the referees and I think that sometimes, at normal speed, it is very difficult to determine. As much as I can be harsh with the referees, on that front I am quite tolerant because when you watch a game live it is very difficult at 100% pace to distinguish whether it is a dive or not.

“Most of the time, when a player is going to the goalkeeper, they push the ball away from goal. They had a good rule in England when I arrived here. When the striker pushes the ball away from the goal, they didn’t give penalties because the only resource the striker has after is to look for a penalty.

“In many cases now, the guy goes and if the goalkeeper has their hands off, the striker leaves a leg as long as he can to make sure that the goalkeeper touches him. But that’s not really a penalty.”

Arsenal face Tottenham on Saturday lunchtime at Wembley, a venue where Wenger’s team have won their last nine matches including three FA Cup finals. “It is a big game because we are behind in the table and we have to catch up,” he says. “It’s more importantly mathematically for us to come back as quickly as possible, rather than it being emotionally charged.”

Wenger is confident that a contract renewal for Jack Wilshere will be agreed soon, following on from the extension signed by Mesut Özil. The England midfielder, who has been at Arsenal since the age of nine, has a few months left on his current deal, which expires in the summer.

“We try to make progress,” Wenger said. “I told you that many times for Özil – you never believed me. I’m positive because I want him to stay. I do the maximum I can to make him happy.” but Aaron Ramsey is not far behind, as his deal runs until the summer of 2019. “There are less time constraints than with Jack,” Wenger says. “With Aaron, if we lose two weeks or three weeks, it doesn’t matter much. I want him to stay as well.”

Both players are in contention for Saturday, Ramsey on the back of his hat-trick against Everton and Wilshere fully recovered having been ill last week.

Wenger is urging his team to defend collectively to try to keep watch on Harry Kane, a player he rates as highly as any striker in Europe. “What you want in a game like that is to keep him quiet and our strikers, who are top-class in Europe as well, to express their talent.”