Brentford striker Ivan Toney was banned from football for eight months with immediate effect on Wednesday after admitting 232 breaches of the FA's betting rules; Toney will be banned until January 16, 2024, and has been fined £50,000; The FA will apply to FIFA for ban to be worldwide
Thursday 18 May 2023 18:01, UK
Ivan Toney has been banned from football for eight months after breaching the FA's betting rules - but what's next for the striker and Brentford? Sky Sports' Rob Dorsett answers the key questions.
Since the FA announcement on Wednesday, I understand Brentford officials have been busily working behind the scenes on how best to react.
First and foremost, will they encourage Toney to appeal against the ban? How best can they support Toney and his family? Especially when the terms of his ban prevent him from attending the club's training ground or stadium, or mixing with his team-mates in a "football environment"?
Sky Sports News understands Brentford are currently assessing how they can best offer support to Toney and his family, when he isn't allowed on site.
Discussions within the club are ongoing about their duty of care for Toney, but also the financial implications of having to continue to pay his wages for an eight-month period when he is unable to play football.
Technically, Brentford could look to bring a legal case against their striker to try to sack him for breaching his contract with the club. But that won't happen.
Thomas Frank said last week that he thinks Toney is worth in excess of £100m in the transfer market. That comment may have been a little tongue-in-cheek, but a fee of £50m+ wouldn't have come as a surprise.
When he returns to competitive football in mid-January, Toney will have less than 18 months remaining on his Brentford contract. That will restrict his transfer value considerably and will have diminished Brentford's best asset.
We know Toney has many clubs who would like to sign him - Tottenham, Chelsea and Manchester United have been linked. The club had been braced for offers prior to the emergence of his betting discrepancies with Thomas Frank recently saying the club value him at least at £100m.
However, Brentford want to offer a new contract to Toney despite his ban and plan to hold talks with the striker in the summer with the intention of extending his deal.
And the club now see a window of opportunity to make sure they retain his value, especially if he returns to the Premier League with a bang next year - and puts his name back at the top of club's shopping lists in the 2024 summer market.
If he did leave in the summer, signing for another club would not sidestep his ban. He will face eight months on the sidelines, whichever shirt is waiting for him.
The FA sanction does allow him to return to training halfway through his ban from September 17.
There will be a lot of thumb-twiddling for Toney over the next four months. That will be very difficult, emotionally, for a man who told me in September, when he was first called up to the England squad, that he "is fulfilling his dream [and] excited and very hungry to achieve more in football, especially with England."
Brentford are very aware of the strain on his mental health, I've been assured, and will provide every support he needs. He'll undergo a fitness regime at home, of course, but in the new year he will have to be re-integrated into first-team football as if he'd had eight months out injured.
It may be far from straightforward for Toney to get back into the Brentford side, too. His team won 2-0 against West Ham last weekend while he sat on the bench with a hamstring strain.
Brentford's front three of Yoane Wissa, Bryan Mbeumo and Kevin Schade showed how life might look in his absence, and certainly the manager will now have to begin making plans without him.
There are strong opinions on either side. Certainly, it is a massive blow for a player who has made a huge impact for both club and country, who is at the peak of his powers, but whose future is now shrouded in uncertainty.
Toney has scored 20 goals this season. Only Erling Haaland and Harry Kane have more in the Premier League. He made his England debut in March and has been competing strongly for the role of understudy to Kane in Gareth Southgate's pecking order.
All of that has come to a shuddering halt, for a man whose rise has been meteoric.
He may yet appeal against the severity of his sanction, once the written reasons for the independent panel's decision have been made public.
I'm told those written reasons should be published before the end of this season - possibly even next week. Once Toney has made his decision whether to accept his fate or lodge an appeal, the FA will apply to FIFA to make the eight-month ban a worldwide sanction.
The FA takes the issue of players and officials gambling on football so seriously because it strikes at the very heart of the integrity of the sport.
If players were allowed to stake money on the outcome of football matches, or on predicting incidents within games, the integrity of the competition is shot.
Even if the bets are placed on matches in which that player is not involved, there is a lot of insider knowledge within football about goings on at other clubs.
And there is no professional footballer in this country that can plead ignorance to the rules.
Before the start of each season, FA officials visit every club and talk to the players and staff about all issues that affect them - including the rules on gambling.
Those who say the ban is too harsh, point to the fact that Kieran Trippier only got a 10-week ban for breaching betting rules, and Daniel Sturridge got a six-week ban (with four suspended) for a similar offence.
But in this case, Toney admitted to 232 charges against him. Trippier was found guilty of four charges, and Sturridge - three.
Critics also point to the fact that Luis Suarez received only an eight-match ban for using a racist term towards Manchester United's Patrice Evra in 2011. How can Toney get eight months, when Suarez only got eight games?
How football as a whole, and the FA specifically, can defend themselves from criticism in this area, is because disciplinary decisions of this type are taken by an independent commission.
FA officials carry out the investigation, they level the charges, but they do not decide on the verdict.
And the independent commission is a quasi-judicial process, often led by a top-ranking legal expert such as a barrister or solicitor from the Kings Counsel.
