Brentford are braced for Premier League clubs to bid for Ivan Toney in January when the England striker has completed his eight-month ban for breaching gambling rules.
Toney, 27, is preparing to switch agents, having been identified by some of English football’s top clubs as a target once his suspension ends on January 16.
The striker, who won his first England cap in March, is set to sign for the world-renowned agency Stellar, which facilitated Jack Grealish’s £100 million move to Manchester City and Gareth Bale’s then world-record transfer to Real Madrid.
Sources close to Toney believe that he has the potential to play for a top-six club and had expected him to leave Brentford this summer before receiving the ban in May.
Brentford are understood to be resigned to Toney departing next year and are believed to value the striker, whose contract expires in 2025, at £80 million.
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Multiple bids are expected but among the interested parties are Arsenal, who have spent £200 million on new recruits this summer, including the goalkeeper David Raya from Brentford.
Toney, who scored 20 league goals last season, is a childhood Liverpool fan but spoke of his admiration for Arsenal in a recent interview on the Diary of a CEO podcast.
The former Newcastle United striker’s suspension prevented him from training with Brentford but he will be eligible to join up with Thomas Frank’s squad in September, having served half the ban.
In May, Toney was banned for eight months and fined £50,000 after he admitted to 232 breaches of the FA’s betting rules between 2017 and 2021. The FA’s regulatory commission pointed to a gambling addiction and concluded he needed help.
Frank, the Brentford head coach, does not want to lose Toney, who has scored 68 goals and contributed 21 assists in 124 appearances since joining the west London club from Peterborough United for an initial fee of £6.5 million in 2020.
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Tottenham Hotspur have also been linked with a move for Toney, having sold Harry Kane to Bayern Munich for £94.5 million this summer.
During the Diary of a CEO interview, Toney spoke of his desire to play for a “big club” but insisted that he ignored the speculation.
“I don’t let this all affect me,” he said. “Obviously it will go on in the background but my job is to keep training well when I get the chance. In the games, keep scoring and doing well — but I think that everybody wants to play at the top of the tree.
“Not that Brentford aren’t there, but I feel like playing for a big club, fighting for trophies, these kind of things, everybody wants to do. If the chance was to come along, I would be silly not to look more into it.”
Gareth Southgate has been a big admirer of Toney and named him in an England squad before last year’s World Cup in Qatar despite the looming ban.
