Yahoo Sports Ivan Toney back with a bang against Nottingham Forest, and drags Brentford with him
HE’S BACK, HE’S BACK, HE’S BACK, HE’S BACK proclaimed the rather hubristic billboard outside the Gtech Community Stadium. So he was. After spending eight months in the football tundra following his ban for 232 betting offences, Ivan Toney returned as both scorer and creator.
As Brentford dispatched a dangerous Nottingham Forest to win their first Premier League game after five successive defeats, Toney the talisman scored his team’s opener with the craftiest of free kicks and instigated Neal Maupay’s winner with a magnificent crossfield ball. In between, he cajoled his team-mates, irritated his opponents and elevated Brentford to the freeflowing hive of industry they had been before his enforced sojourn.
At the final whistle, after 10 added minutes, Toney pumped his fists and, for the first time all evening, displayed the widest of grins before joining his team’s lap of honour. Back? He couldn’t have been more back.
Resplendent in a shirt blaring the Hollywood bets logo, Toney was predictably welcomed with the fervour accorded to returning heroes by the home support and jeered like a pantomime villains by the away contingent. Toney, as is his way, barely shrugged.
Right now, the uncomfortable truth is that Brentford need Toney more than he needs them. The more this season progressed, the more they missed last season’s 20-goal striker. Those five defeats, during which they scored just four goals, plunged them towards the relegation abyss.
Toney himself remains a riddle. As the Euros loom, his midweek declaration that he would like to join a “top club” was ungracious at best, but unlike his intentions, nobody has doubted his keenness to return to last season’s predatory level instantly.
Since being allowed to return to training in October, Toney has built himself back to match fitness, via a personalised programme involving practising penalties from 13 yards and increased behind-closed-doors match-time, culminating with a hat-trick against Southampton last time out.
Socks at ankle level, short-sleeved, sans pony-tail and initially playing in the inside left channel alongside Maupay – standing in for Bryan Mbeumo, Toney’s preferred but injured sidekick – after a minute without a touch, Toney tracked back to rob Callum Hudson-Odoi. Yet before Toney, captaining Brentford with Christian Norgaard injured, could make a significant contribution, Nottingham Forest scored when Vitaly Janelt’s wild clearance spun off the head of Ben Mee to Danilo on the edge of the penalty area,
With one touch, the Brazilian teed himself up and with a second volleyed spectacularly past Mark Flekken. Danilo ran the length of the pitch to celebrate with the Forest fans, but their thoughts were chiefly with Toney. “Toney, Toney, what’s the score?” they chanted and, more wittily “Ivan Toney? He’s surely cashed out.” Again, Toney just shrugged, but the ferocity with which he ran back and his hand-waving disgruntlement at his less adept colleagues suggested he was not shrugging inside.
Then came his goal. Toney drifted right to put over a cross to the back post where, in other circumstances, he might have been himself. Well shackled by Andrew Omobamidele and with Brentford’s three-man defence distinctly rickety, Toney looked frustrated until Orel Mangala hacked down Mikkel Damsgaard on the edge of the area. There was but one candidate for the free-kick taker.
Forest’s wall was big and protected by Danilo as draught excluder. Toney took two steps back, sized up his options and shot forwards. Hudson-Odoi slung out a casual foot, Ryan Yates unaccountably moved out of the way and the low free-kick curled into the goal at Matt Turner’s near-post. In that moment of supreme catharsis, the home support waved their KING OF KINGS: WELCOME HOME IVAN TONEY! banner as Toney hurtled towards his head coach, Thomas Frank. The pair hugged like long-lost lovers before Toney unveiled a Brentford shirt bearing the words For You Uncle Brian.
Toney’ strike upturned a game that had been slipping away from his team. Toney swapped channels with Maupay and when Toney stuck out a flamingo leg to guide the ball into the six yards box from the right, Keane-Lewis-Potter swivelled and cashed his shot against the bar. There was another Toney shot shortly before the break, but, rustiness breaking though, Toney’s effort from 20 yards was so high and so wide, Turner was required only to watch it sail into the ether.
If Lewis-Potter was unlucky with his first effort, he was more culpable when Toney again showcased his skills as a provider with an inviting cross which Lewis-Potter gently caressed into Turner’s arms before Mee overturned the deficit with a header above Murillo’s feeble challenge from Mathias Jensen’s corner.
Forest were not done yet. They levelled when Chris Wood ghosted in ahead of Ethan Pinnock to nod Hudson-Odoi’s cross beyond Flekken.
There was one last Toney twist. He had just endured a robust Omobamidele’s challenge when he set up the winner with a pinpoint ball to Mads Roerslev, who crossed for Maupay to swivel and fire past Turner from the edge of the area. Toney was back and so are Brentford.
