Can Ivan Toney fire Brentford to promotion?

When Brentford brought in Ivan Toney to replace the departing Ollie Watkins last summer, it’s fair to say that few thought the former Peterborough United striker would prove to have the same goalscoring output as their Premier League-bound star. But all the doubters have been made to eat their words, with Toney sitting pretty as the Championship’s top scorer on 25 goals.

If you look at the Championship odds on your mobile, you’ll see that Brentford are fancied to go up, and the form of Toney has been one of the driving forces pushing Brentford towards the promotion spots once again after the club narrowly missed out last year. A new striker with a healthy knack of finding the net has helped to allay some of the disappointment of last season, when Brentford crumbled to miss out on automatic promotion before losing to local rivals Fulham in the play-off final at Wembley.

But while their season has been good so far in an overall sense, Brentford’s recent form has left a little to be desired. Having led the table at one point just a couple of months ago, the Bees have found themselves in a bit of a rut, and have dropped out of the automatic promotion places.

Now more than ever, they will need the goals of Toney to help propel them back into a commanding position. He bagged the all-important winner in the victory over Stoke City recently, and as long as he is fit and firing then Brentford fans will be confident that Toney’s goalscoring ability alone will give them a great chance of making sure of promotion this time around.

It’s been a remarkable campaign for Toney in that he has not really endured a barren spell. The levels of consistency he has shown has been remarkable, especially when you consider that his good form for Peterborough last season came in a lower division. The elevation to Championship standard has not fazed the 24-year-old, and his aim will be to try and taste Premier League football with Brentford next season.

Many feared for Brentford after the departures of Watkins and Saïd Benrahma broke up the famous BMW trio, with only Bryan Mbeumo remaining at the club. But Toney’s arrival, along with Mbeumo’s continued good form, has meant that Brentford have been able to perform to a similar standard to last season.

As the current campaign enters its final throes, it will be interesting to see whether last year’s disintegration will have a mental effect on the team. For players like Toney, who were not around to witness that disappointment, there will be a responsibility to ensure that any such malaise does not affect them. Brentford’s star striker has shown no signs of slowing down, and manager Thomas Frank will be praying that no injuries or bad runs of form claim Toney before the season’s end.

In many ways, it felt last season like everything was falling into place for Brentford to earn promotion to the top flight for the first time in decades. It was the final campaign at their old Griffin Park ground, and a move to their shimmering new stadium lay promisingly on the horizon. It wasn’t meant to be, but the way in which Frank’s men have dusted themselves off and gone again has been admirable, and according to the Championship betting news they are in with a strong shout for promotion again this season.

Toney represents the second incarnation of this talented Brentford team. They have learned the lessons of last season’s debacle, and although they are facing a challenging period at the moment, there is plenty of time to right the ship and sail freely into the hallowed top flight this time around. With Toney’s plentiful goals propelling them all the way, it would be no surprise to see them mixing it with the big guns next seasons.