‘It’s classic Ivan’: Frank expects Toney to thrive on blockbuster return

As he prepared to preview his team’s Saturday night home match against Nottingham Forest, Brentford manager Thomas Frank said, “That’s a good question.” However, it wasn’t the only one he had to answer. Alternatively put, and how everyone is faring: Ivan Toney’s return following an eight-month suspension for gambling offenses. Does the Brentford striker feel that he is being treated unfairly?

Frank is generally the guy with the best answers—always willing to participate, reflect carefully, and provide additional levels of explanation—so it was surprising that he did not receive a stellar response. When questioned about the possibility that Toney would face criticism from rival supporters, he once brought up David Beckham’s experiences following the 1998 World Cup. Frank expressed his wish that the situation would not arise, although he acknowledged that there would likely be more banter than stick.

Regarding the injustice line, Frank concurred that it might provide Toney “an edge” and that it seemed like a reasonable place to start when examining the feelings that have been raging inside the player since November 2022—or possibly even before. Mostly because of how far Toney has taken it on his own.

Since his ban was revealed in May of last year, the 27-year-old has participated in a small number of interviews. In February of 2017, he entered a guilty plea to 232 charges of violating the Football Association’s betting rules, which carried a nearly four-year timeline.

In several of them, Toney expressed his dismay at how “they,” the FA, had “decided to bring it all out” in November 2022, shortly before Gareth Southgate announced his England team for the World Cup in Qatar. A newspaper actually broke the word that Toney was being looked into for betting violations; it wasn’t even an FA press release, and he hadn’t even been charged yet.

Toney believed that the information made it difficult for Southgate to select him, and that missing the World Cup was a worse penalty than his eventual ban when the England manager did not choose him. However, why did “they” decide not to suspend him until May? “It’s like a double hit,” Toney said in an interview with Steven Bartlett’s podcast, The Diary of a CEO. “I thought there was a plot to prevent me from representing England in football.”