Most of us are aware that professional sportsmen and women are usually not allowed to gamble on the sports they take part in, and certainly not fixtures which they themselves are involved in.
It would be a huge breach of the rules of almost any governing body, since it clearly creates a conflict of interests, and opens the door to allegations of cheating.
Step forward, Ivan ‘no sh*ts given’ Toney.
Last November, he was charged by the FA with 232 alleged betting rule breaches, and agreed to assist the FA with their investigations.
A short time later, a further 30 breaches were added to the tally, making a total of 262.
He has accepted almost all of the accusations, but his punishment is yet to be decided.
Who is Ivan Toney?
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I very promising youngster, Toney became the youngest ever Northampton player to start in the first team, aged just 16.
This was his hometown club, and he became a regular member of the squad in 2014/14 season, before Newcastle snatched him up and then successively loaned him out to various League One clubs for 3 years.
Eventually Peterborough signed him permanently and he really began to shine now that he could settle in. He spent two seasons there, scoring 26 times in 39 games in his second season.
In the 2020/21 season he moved to Brentford and gained promotion to the Premier League that same season, and as of today he has scored 15 goals in 23 games for the club, with some fans even crossing their fingers for European football they are doing so well.
He was called up to the England squad by Gareth Southgate too, but is yet to earn his first cap.
What did Ivan Toney do Wrong?
The specifics still haven’t been made clear, but whether he was making bets himself or giving sensitive information out to friends which was not readily available to the public, he did it a lot.
All football players, especially those at his level, would know the rules around this. Or at the very least know not to do it.
The FA rules are broken into sections, but even so they are fairly dense, and the rule Toney has broken is E8, if you want to look lit up.
It has 7 sub sections and some of the sub sections have sub sections of their own, so if you would prefer the TLDR version, it basically says:
A Participant shall not bet, either directly or indirectly, or instruct, permit, cause or enable any person
to bet on –
…and then goes on to list pretty much everything ever to do with a professional football match, competition, player or staff member.
‘Don’t bet and don’t tell other people any inside info which could help them to bet’ – in a nutshell.
The offences took place between 25 February 2017 and 23 January 2021, so in that time Toney would have been playing for:
- Scunthorpe United
- Wigan Athletic
- Peterborough United
- Brentford
Brentford have not commented except to say that any discussions with Toney will remain private.
In a worst case scenario, Toney could end up with a 6 month ban which would be terrible news for Brentford since he is their top scorer by quite some margin.
That said, any ban that is issued could end up covering the Summer period, and thus lessen the damage done to the club since that is when the Premier League breaks between seasons.