Having owned up to multiple breaches of Football Association betting rules, the Brentford striker Ivan Toney faces a lengthy ban. The episode heralds a sad fall from grace for the talented 26-year-old, who might have made England’s World Cup squad had the shadow of the Football Association’s charges not been hanging over him.
It is right that Toney is sanctioned for breaking rules designed to protect the integrity of the game. But the powers-that-be in football can hardly clutch their pearls in horror at this turn of events having suckled hungrily at the gambling industry’s teat for so long.
