Ivan Toney will have seen a ban coming down the track but few things can adequately prepare a footballer for the fact that, over the next eight months, he will be unable to ply his trade. The outcome is among the worst he could have envisaged and casts a shroud of uncertainty over the prospects of a player who has blossomed into one of the country’s most accomplished centre-forwards.
When Toney, who has been suspended after admitting 232 breaches of FA betting rules between 25 February 2017 and 23 January 2021, returns to action he will face a battle to pick up where he left off. Only Erling Haaland and Harry Kane sit ahead of him in this season’s Premier League scoring charts, his 20 goals contributing heavily to a fine year for Brentford. At 27 he is approaching his peak and a lay-off until next January will eat away valuable time from a career whose star had soared.
Three years ago Toney was completing a prolific League One season with Peterborough, where he had finally found a home after being shunted around on five different loans from Newcastle. The Magpies had taken a punt on a 19-year-old who turned heads at Northampton but, until Brentford’s arrival at the highest level, he had made only two top-flight appearances as a substitute.
Now Toney can claim a record of better than a goal every two games in the Premier League and can justifiably say he has got there the hard way. In August 2021 he told the Guardian of his “bumpy road” to the top, having fired Brentford to the elite in his first season at the club, but the sanction imposed by an independent regulatory commission on Wednesday may present the biggest obstacle yet.
Toney will be allowed to resume training in mid-September but his return to competitive action four months later will inevitably be to an unfamiliar backdrop. Football rarely waits around and Thomas Frank will have been obliged to remould his front line. A hamstring injury ruled Toney out of Sunday’s 2-0 win over West Ham while a mobile front three of Yoane Wissa, Bryan Mbeumo and Kevin Schade showed how life might look in his absence. An instant return to leading man status is not guaranteed and Brentford, ever meticulous, will have prepared a transfer window contingency. Equally, it is a hammer blow to a team that has been propelled by his goals. Toney is superb leading the line and, for at least half of 2023-24, Frank must find a way to compensate.
That may have proved the case anyway given Toney is yet to extend his contract beyond 2025 and, before the news of his ban, Brentford could have expected to fetch £50m if and when suitors came calling this summer. As things stand that kind of figure is a pipe dream and opportunistic rivals may sniff a bargain. Half a season out of action is a small encumbrance if you can secure one of the division’s best strikers for a fraction of his usual value. It is not entirely impossible that the punishment may expedite Toney’s next upwards move.
In truth, though, there are no upsides for anyone. The affected parties include Gareth Southgate, whose decision to select Toney for England’s fixtures in March seemed strange given the spectre of a ban loomed large and he had not been called up for the World Cup. Southgate felt he could not ignore Toney’s domestic form, which has shown no sign of being affected by his disciplinary case at any point, and had been mightily impressed by his display at Arsenal on 11 February. He subsequently gave Toney an international debut against Ukraine but is now shorn of an obvious deputy for Harry Kane as the clock ticks towards Euro 2024. The stable is hardly brimming with options but it would be some feat for Toney to revive his England credentials in time for next summer’s tournament.
The footballing ramifications will play out in time but there is a serious social context to take in. A sport that has rolled out the red carpet to the gambling industry in almost every accessible corner should consider a high-profile case of this nature has been waiting to happen. Toney’s breaches are not to be excused and may not be analysed until the independent commission publishes its written reasons, but it is a fact that at least three of his employers – including Brentford – have gladly plastered betting firms’ names on the fronts of their shirts, a form of advertisement that will be banned in 2026.
That is not to imply cause and effect in this case, but nobody in the football industry can complete a day’s work without exposure to numerous exhortations that they gamble. A reassessment of priorities, and of the extent to which football leaves players open to such influences, is long overdue. Otherwise it will be hard to escape the sense that, even if the FA have been correct to punish Toney, his sanction simply represents a fig leaf over a deep, pernicious problem that lies at the authorities’ door.
While the money keeps rolling in, Toney will pay the necessary price for breaking the rules and wonder how his seemingly unstoppable momentum shuddered to a halt.
