‘That’s a good question,” Thomas Frank acknowledged, and it was far from the only one that the Brentford manager faced as he sat down to preview his team’s home game against Nottingham Forest on Saturday evening. Or, to bill it another way, and how everybody is doing: Ivan Toney’s comeback from an eight-month ban for betting offences. Is the Brentford striker fuelled by a sense of injustice?
Surprisingly, it did not get a great answer because Frank is usually the man for a great answer; always ready to engage, to think deeply, to respond with extra layers. At one point, when he was asked about the potential for Toney to get stick from opposition fans, he brought up David Beckham post-1998 World Cup. “I hope that won’t happen but I know there will be some banter and probably more than banter and stick,” Frank said.
On the injustice line, Frank agreed that it could provide “an edge” for Toney and it does feel like a fair starting point for an examination of the emotions that have raged within the player since November 2022 – maybe even before that. It is mainly because of how hard Toney has pushed it himself.
The 27-year-old has given a clutch of interviews since last May when his suspension was announced after he pleaded guilty to 232 breaches of the Football Association’s betting rules over a near-four year period from February 2017.
Toney spoke in more than one of them about his devastation at how “they” – meaning the FA – had “decided to bring it all out” in November 2022 just before Gareth Southgate named his England squad for the Qatar World Cup. The story about Toney being investigated for betting breaches was actually broken by a newspaper; it was hardly an FA press release and, at that point, he had not been charged.
Toney felt the revelation made it impossible for Southgate to pick him and that when the England manager did not, missing the World Cup was a bigger punishment than his eventual ban. But why did “they” wait until May to suspend him? “It’s like a double hit,” Toney told The Diary of a CEO podcast, hosted by Steven Bartlett. “I felt like someone was out to stop me from playing for England.”
Toney also told Bartlett the authorities had made an example of him because of his standing; that players further down the leagues who had broken the betting rules had been punished less severely.
It talks to another interesting theme: Toney’s apparent reluctance to apologise for what he has done. Is he sorry, Frank was asked. “I think he is also … he’s a big believer … of course, it’s not like he thinks it’s fantastic if you make a mistake,” Frank replied. “Let’s say in a football match, he is always holding his hand up if there is something he should have done better. Sorry is a big word. If it could be done different, yeah, I think he would have done but he moves on.”
This was the aspect that Frank wanted to push; Toney’s preternatural ability to live in the moment on the pitch, to immediately park anything that has just been. It is easy from the outside to paint Toney as some kind of avenger, ready to take out his frustration on the Forest defence. The way that Frank tells it, he is simply ready to take out the Forest defence because it is how he is wired.
“The way he plays football is the way he lives his life,” Frank said. “If there’s something good, he still moves forward. Something bad or whatever, injustice … leave it in the past, move forward. He doesn’t play on anger. He plays on smiles, energy, positive thinking.
“Ivan is so good at staying focused – next action, next shot, next pressing situation, next set, link-up. So leave the bad action behind or the good action and just build on the next one. That is a top ability and I think you see that in the top players.”
Frank’s media conference was definitely better attended than normal and the Brentford press officer, Chris Wickham, got a laugh during his welcome address. “Just to let you know we’re not going to take any questions on Ivan Toney,” he said. Towards the end of it, Frank asked how many there had been. “Twenty-six? Yes?” he said. “Let’s hit 30! Come on, we can do that!”
Toney’s comeback was described as the biggest in the Premier League since Eric Cantona’s from his kung-fu kick and Frank wanted to bring up another one – that of Christian Eriksen for his Brentford team in February 2022. It was Eriksen’s first appearance since his cardiac arrest during Denmark’s opening European Championship tie in June 2021.
“It’s different but I compare it a little bit to Christian – also he was not ‘injured’ if that makes sense,” Frank said. “Of course, it was a crazy thing that happened to him but he hit the ground running and I expect the same from Ivan.”
Where Frank did see a parallel between Toney and Cantona was in their supreme self-confidence. “There’s a story with our defender Charlie Goode, who is a good friend of Ivan’s,” Frank said. “When Ivan came to the club [from Peterborough in 2020] and didn’t score for the first four games, Charlie said to him: ‘Are you OK?’ Ivan said: ‘Yeah, I’ll smash the scoring record in the Championship, I will score more than 30 goals.’ Which he did. He has got that confidence. He believes he can score in every action.”
There remain so many uncomfortable elements to the Toney saga. When he was first interviewed by the FA in May 2022, he said that he had not bet on matches. Only later would he admit to doing so, albeit there was a caveat in his interview with Bartlett. “There were bets in the 232 that I didn’t recall making but I was willing to take responsibility just to get the process all over and done with,” Toney said.
Toney told Bartlett he “didn’t lie … I just couldn’t remember what they were asking for – until they brought certain things in front of me.” Then there was the line: “If I just deny it, it’s all fine – they wouldn’t find anything.”
Toney’s admission to Sky this week that he did not know whether the move he wants to a top club could come this month was poorly judged, although it probably spoke more to his insatiable desire. He has had to battle to protect his mental health, particularly during the first four months of his ban when he was not allowed to train with Brentford. There has also been the reality of his gambling addiction.
Toney wants to move on. “He’s like an eight-year-old boy who just has the pure joy of playing football,” Frank said, while confirming that Toney would start against Forest and wear the captain’s armband in the absence of the injured Christian Nørgaard.
Even without Toney, the game would have been high profile: injury-hit Brentford desperate to end a five-game losing streak against a Forest team one place above them in 15th and reeling from the announcement they face a possible points deduction for breaking financial rules. With Toney, it is a blockbuster.
“It’s perfect timing for Ivan, it’s classic Ivan,” Frank said. “It could have been away, a 12.30pm kick-off, but now it’s at home, under the floodlights at 5.30pm and a little bit on the game, I would say. He will just thrive on that environment.”
