Brentford’s Ivan Toney Issued Eight Month Suspension: Hypocrisy Or The Right Thing To Do?

Brentford’s prolific striker Ivan Toney has been handed an eight-month suspension from ‘all football related activity’ by the Football Association. The ban comes in the wake of the forward having accepting the fact that he broke the FA’s rules around betting, with the organisation saying that he had breached their rules 232 times.

In addition to the ban, which will stop him from playing for the team until the 17th of January, he will also pay a fine of £50,000. Having had a personal hearing in front of an independent Regulatory Commission, Toney was ‘disappointed’ by the ban.

Toney has been something of a journeyman before enjoying success with Brentford, representing not only them but also Scunthorpe United, Wigan Athletic and Peterborough United during the period of time that the breaches of the FA’s rules occurred. His 20 goals in 33 appearance for the Bees helped them to secure Premier League survival for another season, but the suspension means that he won’t be present in the squad for either this weekend’s match against Tottenham Hotspur nor the final day of the season clash against will-be champions Manchester City.

What Happened

Between the 25th of February 2017 and the 23rd of January 2021, Ivan Toney was alleged to have placed bets that broke the Football Associations rules on gambling. It was confirmed on the 16th of November 2022 that there had been 232 breaches of the FA’s rules around betting, with another 30 charges added to his rap sheet on the 20th of December 2022.

In February of 2023, Toney admitted to many of the charges, contesting some of the others. On the 2nd of March that year, the Brentford player said that he was ‘shocked and disappointed’ to read press speculation about the case before he’d even had his formal hearing.

The disappointment from Toney came in the wake of leaks that suggested that he was likely to face a six-month ban. The Football Association had informed him that details of the case would remain confidential until a decision had been made, leading to the player writing on his Instagram account that his lawyers would be ‘writing to the FA to request that they conduct a leak inquiry,’ owning to the fact that it was the second time that information about the case appeared to have been leaked to the newspapers.

The previous time came just before he was called up by England.

A Lengthy Ban

The FA’s decision to impose such a lengthy ban on Toney might have come as a surprise to the player, but to most others it will not have been a shock.

In December 2020, Kieran Trippier was given a ten week ban by the Football Association after it was felt that he gave information out to others in order to allow them to place bets on his impending transfer from Tottenham Hotspur to Atletico Madrid. Joey Barton, meanwhile, was handed an 18-month bad after he admitted to placing 1,260 bets over a period of ten years. Barton’s ban was eventually reduced to 13 months after he appealed.

Football players who ply their trade in England are banned from placing any bets on football, or asking others to place such bets for them. Rule E8 is the only that outlines the restrictions placed on players in the UK, with the 232 breaches that have been proven by the FA enough to mean that  Toney will miss a large chunk of games and of training. He will be allowed to return to training on the 17th of September 2023, which is four months before the ban will be up, giving him time to get his fitness back up before he starts playing for Brentford again midway through next season.

Is The Ban Right?

The obvious question that most football supporters will find themselves asking is whether to ban imposed on Toney is right or fair. On the one hand, there is no question that the FA has made its position on betting perfectly clear. The rules are there for players to read in black and white when they sign for Premier League clubs and Toney himself admitted breaching them.

What many fans feel, though, is that there is a huge amount of hypocrisy at play that the Brentford forward is the victim of. He made his name playing in the Sky Bet sponsored Football League, for example.

Photos of him appearing in news stories show that he is wearing a kit sponsored by Hollywood Bet. For a long time, the Football Association itself was sponsored by Ladbrokes. There is a clear relationship between football and betting that has been in place for a long time and earns the sport huge amounts of money.

There are also questions to be asked about the timing of the ban, with Spurs and Man City able to face Brentford without the forward when other teams were not, whilst the timing of the ban means that a large part of it will be served during the summer break.

There is also a question around what any ‘football related activity’ actually means. If he were to go for a walk in the park and a group of youngsters were playing ball, with a mis-kick sending it in his direction, would he be allowed to kick it back? What would happen if he turned on the television and there was a football match on, would he be expected to turn over?

The ban on the player taking part in training feels particularly cruel, given the fact that it means that his fitness would suffer during the peak part of his career, all for placing bets on matches that he likely had no influence on the outcome of.

Is There Any Way Around It?

The ban that has been imposed on Ivan Toney by the Football Association will only apply in England. As a result, there is a theory from some quarters that he might be able to get around it by going to play abroad for a few months. The FA, meanwhile, are letting it be known that it will block any attempt from Toney to avoid facing the ban by going to play his football elsewhere until January. If he were to move abroad, the Football Association would need to hand his registration over to another footballing association, at which point they would confirm the ban and ask for it to be imposed elsewhere.

There is nothing to stop him from keeping up his fitness at home, presuming that he has a home gym and other fitness equipment. Yet there is also the reality that the sort of fitness that you can keep up in your home gym isn’t the same as the one that you get from taking part in football matches.

That is something that he won’t be able to do until January 2024, with the FA almost certain to be successful in attempts to stop him from playing anywhere else. The FA applied to FIFA to extend the bans of both Kieran Tripper and Daniel Sturridge when they were found guilty of breaching betting rules, with Fabio Paratici ban extended out of Italy recently.