Arsene Wenger has reignited the debate over diving by suggesting that players found guilty of gamesmanship should be retrospectively banned by the English Football Association.

The Arsenal manager's proposal comes just three days after Chelsea's Shaun Wright-Phillips was severely criticised by the Newcastle captain Alan Shearer for his reaction to a soft challenge by Robbie Elliott in the dying moments of the clubs' FA Cup quarter-final tie on Wednesday.

Elliott was sent off after being awarded a second yellow card, even though replays showed that he had made no contact with Wright-Phillips' outstretched leg. Under Wenger's scheme, the Blues winger could have been sanctioned by the match officials on the basis of video evidence and suspended for up to three games.

"It looked like Shaun Wright-Phillips made more of it than he should have and my view is that as managers we have to fight against it," said Wenger. "There is only one way to deal with this and that is for referees to retrospectively punish people who dive obviously. They should be suspended.

"The only issue is that these things are very difficult to prove: clubs would get lawyers to argue that they were touched and did not dive. But I see no other way of getting rid of it. Once a player has been proved to have dived and punished they would not do it again."

The cynics will point out that one of the Premiership's most notorious acts of play-acting was committed by one of Wenger's own players in September 2003 when Robert Pires fell theatrically in the penalty area under a non-existent challenge by the Portsmouth defender Dejan Stefanovic.

Thierry Henry converted the resultant penalty to earn Arsenal a draw and preserve their unbeaten league record which duly stretched until the end of the season, but that did not spare Pires a barrage of criticism in the aftermath.

The French winger can expect a hostile reception from Portsmouth supporters when he makes the trip to Fratton Park this evening, although Wenger was coy when asked whether he felt Pires would have been punished under his own scheme. "With a good lawyer, no," he said with a smile.

Wenger was in buoyant mood yesterday, and understandably so. The gloom of mid-winter when Arsenal appeared a club in meltdown has been dispersed by the spring sunshine. A win on the south coast this evening would lift Arsenal above their north London rivals Tottenham Hotspur, who do not play until Monday, into fourth place in the Premiership and there is still the juicy prospect of Tuesday's Champions League quarter-final with Juventus.

There has been an ominous fluency to Arsenal's football lately and their vibrancy cannot simply be ascribed to the deficiencies of recent opponents such as Charlton and Fulham. Players who had looked embarrassingly out of their depth earlier this season have suddenly blossomed: Aleksandr Hleb, the £10 million recruit from Vfb Stuttgart, is finally treating the ball as something to treasure rather than fear; Philippe Senderos is beginning to show the composure he exudes for Switzerland; even Emmanuel Adebayor, the new signing from Togo, is finding his range.

Arsenal's revival will be tested at a similarly revitalised Portsmouth but it is on Tuesday that Wenger's squad will face their sternest examination. Forget the flaky Real Madrid: it is Juventus, buoyed by a yawning 10-point lead at the summit of Serie A, who will prove whether Arsenal's resurgence is permanent.

With that in mind, Arsenal's greatest enemy tonight could be complacency: not so, insisted Wenger. "For us, the Champions League starts at Portsmouth," he said. "It's as big a game as the Juventus game, if not bigger.

"I cannot ensure that the players do not think about Tuesday's game on Saturday. But for us Portsmouth is a big match because we are in a situation where we simply cannot afford to drop points. We are competing with too many rivals and we are not in a situation to turn off."

The only cloud on Arsenal's horizon is the continuing absence of Sol Campbell. The England defender had been expected to return to Arsenal squad for the match with Portsmouth after emerging unscathed from two reserve games - his first competitive football since he walked out of Highbury mid-way through the club's 3-2 defeat to West Ham on February 1st - but Wenger is still not convinced that the 31-year-old is ready for a first team comeback.

"Sol is not injured but he is not in the squad," he added. "Mentally, he is 100 per cent right and he is 90 per cent there physically. I think he will be back at any moment but the defence is doing well and I have to pick the team on a game-by-game basis. He has no problem with my decision."