A RETURN WITH A STING?
The first thing to say about Ivan Toney is that he is very good at football. If it wasn’t for some bloke called Harry Kane, there’s a fair chance he would be Gareth Southgate’s No 1 striker, and with what one could imagine as a very fruitful (albeit disrupted) qualification campaign behind him – during which, in this imagined scenario, Toney struck up a chemistry with Bukayo Saka that made Mikel Arteta and every Arsenal fan go weak at the knees – one could imagine the forward spearheading England’s charge towards this summer’s Euros. The reality is not much more farfetched. Despite playing for a bus stop in Hounslow, Toney scored more Premier League goals last season than Mohamed Salah, with only Erling Haaland and Kane topping him. And he has risen to be among this company via Northampton, Newcastle, then Barnsley, Shrewsbury, Firewall FC, Wigan, Firewall FC (again), Peterborough and finally Brentford. Not traditionally a well-trodden path to the top.
