Ivan Toneys unconventional journey from Newcastle cast-off to England call-up

A version of this article was originally published on September 15, 2022 

For a long time, it felt like Ivan Toney would never fulfil his vast potential.

At the age of 16, he became the youngest player to represent Northampton Town when he came off the bench for them against Bradford City in the FA Cup in November 2012. Three years later, after scoring 13 times in 60 appearances, he joined Newcastle United in a deal worth £250,000 — it was supposed to be the launchpad for his career.

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However, Toney only made four senior appearances, all as a substitute, during his time at St James’ Park. Newcastle were constantly battling relegation from the top flight or trying to get promoted, and Toney’s chances were extremely limited. He was sent on loan six times in three years and was in danger of getting lost.

Four-and-a-half years after Newcastle sold him permanently to League One side Peterborough United for £650,000, Toney has evolved into a deadly striker. Only Erling Haaland (28) and Harry Kane (20) have scored more goals than him (16) in the Premier League this season.

Yet his impressive form for Brentford was not enough to convince Gareth Southgate to take him to the World Cup. The 27-year-old’s chances of being involved in Qatar looked ominous after he was called up for England’s Nations League fixtures against Italy and Germany in September, but failed to feature.

In November, after England’s squad for the World Cup had been announced, the Football Association formally charged Toney with allegedly breaching gambling rules on 232 occasions. A month later, the FA added more charges to bring the total to 262. Toney has pleaded guilty to some charges, but is contesting others.

Despite the uncertainty swirling around his future, Southgate has recalled Toney for England’s Euro 2024 qualifiers against Italy and Ukraine later this month.

This is just the latest chapter in what has been an unconventional journey to the top.

Toney experienced his first major disappointment in football when he was part of Leicester City’s academy aged 14. He was not offered a scholarship and found out when a member of the training staff accidentally told him.

Having grown up in the Eastfield district of Northampton with his mum and two sisters, he instead joined Northampton Town. He was given his debut by Aidy Boothroyd, then got more chances when Chris Wilder took over in January 2014. Wilder and his assistant coach Alan Knill needed to quickly assess a squad that was in the League Two relegation zone.

“In one of our first training sessions, the ball fell over Ivan’s shoulder in an 11-sided game and he smashed it into the top corner,” Wilder, who is now Watford’s manager, tells The Athletic. “I looked at Alan and said, ‘He might have something’.

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“Was it a time to be basing the long-term future of your football club on a 17-year-old? Not really, so we brought in some experienced players — Emile Sinclair and Alan Connell — at the top of the pitch to get us out of the situation.”

Northampton’s form started to improve while Toney continued to impress in training. He forged a close bond with defenders Ben Tozer and Lee Collins, with whom he competed at head tennis.

“Ivan was different to the other youth-team players,” Tozer says. “When they come up to train with the first team, they can cower away, be shy and nervous, but he would just play his game and be a bit cheeky. He was mature for his age and technically superb.

“He was tall and gangly, but he has completely filled out now. He just needed to grow into his body and show maturity with his decision-making.”

On the penultimate weekend of the 2013-14 season, Wilder handed Toney his second league start. Northampton travelled to Dagenham & Redbridge knowing that defeat would virtually confirm relegation to the National League. Their young star helped them to win 3-0.

“He was doing that well in training. We couldn’t keep him out any longer,” Wilder says. “We chucked him into it against Dagenham and he was outstanding. His ability was never in question and he scored two incredible goals.”

Toney opened the scoring with a header but his next effort was even better. Dagenham’s goalkeeper Jordan Seabright dropped the ball from a corner and Toney took a touch before executing an overhead kick. The striker’s first goals in senior football lifted his hometown club away from the drop.

He scored another header in a 3-1 victory over Oxford United on the final day of the campaign as Northampton stayed up by three points. “Ivan effectively kept us up,” Tozer says. “He just took the game by the scruff of the neck with what he did and that just epitomises him.”

The following season was filled with ups and downs. Toney failed a medical before a proposed move to Wolverhampton Wanderers but speculation about his future persisted. He was still developing as a player and scored eight times to help Wilder’s side finish in mid-table.

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Graham Carr was Newcastle’s chief scout in 2015 and he had previously played for and managed Northampton. He used his connections at the club to seal Toney’s signature. Tozer, who had made a similar move to Newcastle at the beginning of his career, offered the striker advice and spoke to his father, Ivan Toney Sr, over the phone.

The then-19-year-old was signed for Newcastle’s development squad but he made an instant impression on the first team. He was put one-on-one with tough-tackling defensive midfielder Cheick Tiote and managed to dribble past him after being floored several times. Tiote implored head coach Steve McClaren to give the youngster a chance.

He made cameo appearances against former club Northampton and Sheffield Wednesday in the League Cup, and made his top-flight debut as a substitute against Chelsea.

“Going up to Newcastle, it was an exciting time,” he told The Athletic during an interview in October 2019. “I moved away from home for the first time as a young lad, which was always going to be difficult but I feel I coped with it well, and I just got on with things. I started scoring goals for the under-23s and I felt ready for that chance.”

Yet his career started to veer off-track. He spent the second half of the 2015-16 campaign with Barnsley after initially joining them on loan for a month in November. He struggled. McClaren was sacked by Newcastle in March and replaced by Rafael Benitez.

When Benitez was Everton’s head coach before a trip to face Brentford last November, he insisted he never met Toney during their time together at Newcastle.

“I didn’t coach him any day,” the Spaniard said. “I didn’t talk with him when I was there because he was on loan. In all of the reports that I had when I was asking for players for the first team, nobody was telling me that he was an option.

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“I wasn’t aware of anything about him until he was doing really well in the Championship and he’s doing really well now in the Premier League.”

Too good for the under-23s but not ready for the first team, Toney was sent out on loan to Shrewsbury Town at the beginning of the 2016-17 season. He switched teams in January following a charm offensive from Scunthorpe United’s manager Graham Alexander.

“Ivan played against us for Shrewsbury in the EFL Trophy,” the former Salford City and Motherwell boss tells The Athletic. “I concentrate so much on my team when we’re playing, I very rarely see an opposition player stand out but he was up front on his own, which was a pretty thankless task, and was a real handful for our back four. He competed for everything.”

Alexander went up to Newcastle during the January transfer window and had a meeting with Toney at the train station. He spoke about the challenge of playing for a team competing for promotion in League One and outlined how he could help the striker kick on.

“He wanted to get into the team, score goals and win,” Alexander says. “We knew he would thrive up front for us but we had to focus on his hold-up play and work out of possession, too. That comes with experience and coaching. He has developed brilliantly.”

Scunthorpe missed out on automatic promotion to the Championship by four points and lost to Millwall in the play-off semi-finals. Toney returned to Newcastle but there was still no place for him.

The striker rejected a reunion with Scunthorpe in favour of a loan at Wigan Athletic, who had just been relegated from the second tier. Opportunities turned out to be limited, so he went back to Glanford Park in January 2018. It was his sixth spell away from Newcastle in three years and turned out to be his last.

Scunthorpe were struggling for form and an incident in a 2-1 defeat to Shrewsbury caused Alexander to fall out with Toney. The pair patched things up but the manager was fired just over a week later.

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“We were awarded a penalty and he picked up the ball,” Alexander explains. “There was a long delay because Ivan had a discussion with Josh Morris, our regular penalty taker. Josh missed it because it took so long to take it.

“Ivan was desperate to score goals. I knew that was a part of his make-up and it’s why I wanted him, but on that occasion, his hunger to score goals overcame the team. It was against the manager (Paul Hurst) he played for previously. He wanted to prove a point but he made a mistake, and I’m sure he learned from it.”

It was a moment of immaturity from a young striker who wanted to show everybody who doubted him what he was capable of. Toney has admitted he has learned over the course of his career to control his emotions better.

By the end of his second spell with Scunthorpe, it was time for him to find a permanent home. Norwegian side Brann were interested in signing him but he opted to join Peterborough instead. What should have been a fantastic opportunity at Newcastle ended with a whimper.

“Peter Beardsley and Ben Dawson were the (Newcastle under-23) coaches and they were both great with me,” Toney said in 2019. “Peter just said to me, ‘Wherever you are, the under-23s or out on loan, you might think it’s a drop down but you’ve still got to score goals’. I made sure to listen to him and I felt I was doing that. I never let my standards drop. I was improving and I was scoring goals, but no matter what I did, the chances with the first team never came.

“I didn’t feel like I was given a proper chance. I still don’t. I’m not sure the manager (Benitez) gave me a proper opportunity. That’s his choice. He brought in players he wanted to work with, rather than giving youth a chance.

“If you’re not valued somewhere, which I didn’t feel I was, then go somewhere you do feel valued. That’s what I did. Perhaps it happened for the best because it means I’m here now, scoring goals again and picking up my career.”

“Picking up my career” is a modest way for Toney to describe his renaissance at Peterborough. It turned out that to truly thrive on the pitch, he needed to feel loved.

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“Going to the Premier League from the Championship is a big step up — never mind League One or Two,” Alexander says. “Sometimes, players have to go through the levels. When he went to Peterborough it wasn’t a stepping stone for four months. It was somewhere he could just grow.”

Wilder agrees: “You just need to find that home and a club that suits you and makes you feel comfortable. He is not the first player to go to a big club and have it not work out, so he had to go somewhere to start again. But you did sometimes fear (that he would not fulfil his potential).

“Maybe he needed to take a little bit of responsibility, and that criticism on the chin, that his career drifted for a period. But he got it back on track and that is the biggest thing.”

In his first year with Peterborough, Toney was the club’s top scorer with 16 goals and helped them to finish seventh. It was only a glimpse of the carnage to come. In the 2019-20 League One season, which was decided on a points-per-game average after it was cancelled due to the pandemic, he found the back of the net 24 times and provided six assists, which earned him League One’s player of the season award.

🎥 @ivantoney24 has a thing about scoring stunning goals in the @EmiratesFACup!

This strike against Bradford came in the 2018/19 Emirates FA Cup 2nd Round win.#pufc | #ThrowbackThursday pic.twitter.com/2n9W1olRBP

— Peterborough United (@theposh) November 26, 2020

George Boyd was a member of Peterborough’s squad and recalls that it was Toney’s mentality which set him apart.

“To play at the top level, you need to have that edge and that confidence,” he says. “You need to believe in yourself and Ivan had that straightaway. He had knockbacks in his career but had the hunger to prove himself.

“We just thought he was going to score every game. People don’t realise how hard he works and how he is technically very good, too.”

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Boyd spent three years playing for Burnley under Sean Dyche and when Peterborough faced them in a third-round FA Cup tie in January 2020, he was asked about Toney’s qualities by their scouts.

Boyd told them, “’You have to sign him’, but they wouldn’t take the gamble.”

Toney was ready for a new challenge in the summer of 2020. Peterborough had given him a platform to reignite his career but it was time to test himself at a higher level again.

Newcastle did not have a buy-back option and they did not enquire about his availability. Two other Premier League clubs registered an interest, as did Celtic, while David Pleat recommended Toney to Tottenham Hotspur as a deputy to Harry Kane.

However, it ended up being Brentford who pushed hardest. They agreed to pay Peterborough a £6million ($6.8m) fee, rising to £10million ($11.4m) with add-ons. After having two bids rejected in January, they had finally secured their top transfer target. Or so it seemed.

“I clearly remember when we had the meeting with him,” Thomas Frank, Brentford’s head coach, told reporters after Toney scored a hat-trick in their 5-2 victory over Leeds United earlier this month.

“He bought into everything but he was in doubt. Maybe he wanted to go directly to the Premier League if that was possible. It kept dragging on. I told Phil (Giles, Brentford’s co-director of football at the time) to give me his number so I could seduce him.

“I called Ivan when I was in Denmark, standing outside my sister-in-law’s house, and I said, ‘What are you in doubt about? I promise you this: with your quality and the way we play, you will score a minimum of 25 goals in the Championship. So there are two options: either we go up and everyone is happy or two, we will sell you’.

“Finally, he found out what was the best solution and since then it’s been a very happy marriage.”

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Toney was parachuted into a Brentford side that had just suffered an agonising 2-1 defeat to their west London rivals Fulham in the 2020 Championship play-off final. Ollie Watkins and Said Benrahma were sold to Aston Villa and West Ham United respectively, and the pressure was on Toney to perform instantly.

He was a completely different player to Watkins, who he replaced, though. Watkins relies on speed and playing on the shoulder of the last defender. Toney needs good-quality service into the box. How would his new team-mates adapt?

“Thomas told me to just anticipate where the ball is going to be and where it should be,” Toney told The Athletic last year. “Nine times out of 10, it doesn’t come there and the 10th time, it does. You get a chance and that’s the chance you need. That advice was key and I took that on board.”

Toney did not score in his first three appearances but then everything fell into place. He broke the Championship goalscoring record with 31 goals in 45 matches and scored a penalty in the play-off final against Swansea City at Wembley, sending Brentford back to the top flight for the first time in 74 years.

Frank’s prediction had come true.

As he has done so many times this season, Ivan Toney sticks the ball away from the spot!

Brentford lead Swansea at Wembley! 🐝pic.twitter.com/AzREWXW8b5

— Sky Sports (@SkySports) May 29, 2021

The arrival and resurgence of Christian Eriksen might have stolen a lot of the headlines during Brentford’s debut season in the Premier League, yet Toney was their most important player. He is crucial to the way Frank’s side set up and is a member of their senior leadership group.

When Brentford suffered a dip in form, Toney scored all five of their goals in crucial victories against Norwich City and Burnley in March. They propelled Brentford away from danger.

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The striker’s performances just keep getting better. He tormented Manchester City’s defence when Brentford claimed a memorable victory over the champions at the Etihad before Christmas and was a nuisance against league leaders Arsenal.

He has already scored more goals (16) than he did last season (12) while his exceptional penalty record — he has converted all 22 he has taken for Brentford — is a skill any manager would crave. Callum Wilson got in England’s squad for the World Cup ahead of Toney, but he has only found the back of the net twice in his last 11 appearances. Since the start of the 2021-22 campaign, Kane (48) and Bukayo Saka (37) are the only English players to have been directly involved in more goals than Toney (36).

Toney’s situation with the FA investigation is complex, but Southgate clearly feels he has a lot to offer. Southgate watched Brentford’s 1-0 defeat to Everton last week and his assistant, Steve Holland, attended their 3-0 victory against Southampton in February. Toney is also eligible to represent Jamaica and was approached by Michael Ricketts, president of the country’s football federation, but rejected the proposition.

“Some people might see Ivan as a battering ram for what he has done to certain centre-backs, but he can hold the ball up, pass and drop into the No 10 role and put his strike partner in. He has every attribute”, Tozer says.

🔥 @ivantoney24 🔥

Completing the hat-trick in style#BrentfordFC | #BRELEE | @SafetyCultureHQ pic.twitter.com/Y0LU09DU9Y

— Brentford FC (@BrentfordFC) September 3, 2022

Bryan Mbeumo, Toney’s strike partner at Brentford, offers similar praise. “He is a very hard player for opponents to deal with because he has the capacity to change his type of play,” says the Frenchman. “Looking ahead to the World Cup, I absolutely believe he would add something new and different to the strikers that England already have.”

“Harry Kane is the top man for England,” Alexander says. “But I’ve always felt England haven’t got a natural alternative. Ivan is his own player but if you want someone who is physically competitive, can bring others into play and is going to back himself when balls are coming into the box, then he ticks all the boxes.

“In the last three or four years, he has proven that he always takes a step up in his stride and finds what he needs to do to be successful at the next level. I don’t see why he can’t do the same on the international stage.”

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Seven months after his first call-up, Toney is back in England’s squad and still awaiting his debut.

Away from the pitch nobody is entirely sure what will happen in the next few months, but his prospects on it have never looked better.

(Top photo: Dave Howarth/CameraSport via Getty Images)

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