As a Brentford fan I can safely say that impact of his ban will be fairly significant but it's by no means disastrous. We've had Toney missing from three games this season - two of which we won, including beating Liverpool, and the third we conceded a comical OG in injury time against Forest resulting in a draw. In each games we paired Wissa and Mbuemo as a replacement strike force and in each games they both scored.
We've lost our top scorers in recent seasons - Maupay to BHA and Watkins to Villa - and have always improved, so I'm not too concerned. We've known about him being investigated for well over a year and have planned ahead with the purchase of Schade.
It does seem like an excessive ban, although at this stage we don't know what he was betting on. That Trippier got 10 weeks for passing on privileged information that another person financially benefited from, then Toney must have placed bets on games he was involved in - I've privately heard that he had placed bets on him scoring... but that's not likely to have impacted a game or result (if true). I'd also recently heard from a well-placed fellow Bee that the club would be pleased if the ban came in at 9 months, so this news hasn't particularity surprised me.
At the same time, he's got to accept responsibility for his actions - he's let himself, his teammates and the fans down, but his attitude so far seems to indicate that he knows he's messed up and has to pay the price. I didn't vote for him as POTS recently for this reason - that vote obviously went to Pinnock, the most underrated CB in the league
Toneyv has also shot himself in the foot massively as he has developed into an leading striker and arguably one of, if not the best target man in the game. Bah!
It's annoying, as it does unfortunately and perhaps unfairly affect the club - We've not had anything to do with it but are being punished by the loss of one of our best players. Furthermore, it screws his value as at the point he'll return to the game he'll only have 18 months left on his contract.
It's no argument about the ban or that it should lessen the amount of time he's out for, but there's a real problem between the football industry and the betting one. To have betting ads and sponsorships rammed down their throats but to lose a large part of your short career for getting involved seems like an unbalanced environment.
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