20 January 2024
Bees Looking for Ivan the Brilliant
The long-awaited return of Ivan Toney is finally here as the Brentford talisman reports for first-team duties against Nottingham Forest in the Premier League. Thomas Frank’s side have looked like a jigsaw with a huge piece missing since his ban for breaching FA betting rules.
Toney will take the captain’s armband at the Gtech Community Stadium as he looks to repay the faith of both the club and the fans, while proving a lot of haters wrong in the process. Brentford’s striker has said he ‘feels like a free man’ after finally being released from ‘football prison’ after admitting to falling out of love with the game during his 8-month ban.
The FA charged Toney under rule E8 which bans players from betting on games, asking others to do so on their behalf or sharing privileged information for betting purposes. They charged him with 262 breaches of the rule but were to later drop 30 of them and the player then admitted to the remaining 232 charges.
However, Toney said that he did not recall many of the instances and agreed to having made them just to try and put the matter to bed once and for all. At first the FA alleged ‘match fixing’ but as Ivan Toney said himself, it was far from this. He was betting but never looked to effect the bets made on the pitch.
29 of the bets related to the club he was registered with or was on loan with at the time. 13 of which directly related to bets on his team to lose, although Toney was not involved in those games. 11 of the cases were on Newcastle to lose while he was on loan elsewhere. 2 of the instances were on a Wigan vs Aston Villa game, while he was on loan to Wigan, but was not in the matchday squad.
Originally, he was looking at a 15-month ban which was cut to 11 when he admitted the breaches, which was then reduced by a further 3 months taking into consideration his age (now 27) and his diagnosis of addiction.
Credit: @ivantoney24
The FA made an example of Ivan Toney with other instances of players caught gambling seeming tame by comparison. Kieran Trippier was banned for 10 weeks and fined £70,000 after bets were placed on his prospective transfer from Tottenham to Atletico Madrid. Martin Demichelis and Cameron Jerome were both found guilty of betting breaches but in both cases were fined but not banned.
In 2013, Andros Townsend was found guilty of betting breaches and banned for four months, which was later reduced to one month. Nottingham Forest player Harry Toffolo was found guilty of breaching betting rules on 375 occasions between January 2014 and March 2017 and was given a suspended five month ban.
What really hurt Toney was that for the first four months of his ban, he was not allowed into the Brentford ground, preventing him from training with his teammates. The striker was literally put into solitary confinement by the FA without concern for the mental health of the individual. This is where the player really struggled and fell out of love with the sport.
Ivan Toney has not had an easy route into the big time and went through some phases in his career where he really had to work hard to try and achieve his goals in the sport. Toney had a failed move from Northampton to Wolves, where he had been given a squad number and met all the staff only to be told that they had identified he had scoliosis in his back and were no longer looking to pursue the transfer.
He then ended up signing for Newcastle but struggled with the fame and fortune that came with a big move and admittedly got in with the wrong crowds. A number of loan moves came while at The Magpies but ultimately, he only made two appearances for the Toon Army. These appearances were at the start of his time there, coming off the bench on both occasions.
The striker then went to Peterborough where 40 goals in 76 appearances led to Brentford signing him. He has not looked back since then and has amassed 63 goals in 111 games for The Bees. Having failed to score in his first three games for his new club, when asked by a coach if everything was okay, Toney told him he was going to break the record for goals in the Championship. He duly delivered, scoring his 31st goal of the season against Bristol City.
Credit: @BrentfordFC
Many have questioned the support offered to players with addiction in the modern game and as Ivan Toney returns to his club, he dons a shirt with the sponsor Hollywood Bets emblazoned all over it. In 2023/24 a total of eight Premier League teams are sponsored by gambling companies which equated to almost half of the teams in the league.
It seems like a recovering alcoholic checking into rehab to get clean, then returning to work as an ambassador for a brewery. No doubt the Brentford sponsor will continue to parade their show-pony over all of their merchandising.
This weekend he will play his first game since his ban for Brentford against Nottingham Forest at the Gtech Community Stadium. Playing in front of his own fans, with a fire burning inside him, watch out for Ivan Toney. The player has shown through his career that he is a fighter, it is safe to say we can expect to see Ivan Toney come back swinging. Forest beware.
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