Frank eager for a closer look at football’s ‘dark arts’

Brentford boss Thomas Frank has called for action to stop football’s “dark arts” after Ivan Toney’s first penalty miss in four and a half years.

Frank says opposition players regularly abuse Toney as he prepares to take a spot-kick.

Toney took himself away from the penalty spot prior to his effort against Newcastle, with Mathias Jensen instead holding the ball.

But he still saw his spot-kick saved by Nick Pope to ruin his perfect record of 22 successful penalties out of 22 for Brentford.

“I sometimes wonder if you should do something about that,” said Frank after his side slipped to a 2-1 defeat.

“When there’s a penalty a lot of teams need to have strategies to put a different taker on the ball first so he gets all the abuse, and the right taker doesn’t get the abuse.

“Maybe we should look into that, in general. Because when the decision is made, rightly or wrongly, why not have it as a man-to-man duel, keeper and striker, instead of all that mental bit? That’s just a question I’d like to ask.

“I don’t think that’s why he missed. But every single time someone wants to get into Ivan’s head.

“We’ve experienced it before. I think it the first time was against Norwich, Tim Krul, he’s always very active on the taker. So we took Ivan away.

“But I think it should be the other way round. It shouldn’t be the need to think about a strategy. I think we need to think about sportsmanship in the game.

“I know the game management bit, but I think we need look into the dark arts of football. Where is the sportsmanship?”

“Should referees be more aware of it? Yes, I think so.”

Toney did score with a second penalty to put the Bees ahead, but Newcastle came back to win thanks to David Raya’s own goal and Alexander Isak’s strike.

Frank also revealed that he had made plans to counter Toon boss Eddie Howe’s sidekick Jason Tindall on the touchline.

He added: “We were deliberately more active towards the fourth official because we knew that Newcastle have that strategy.

“Jason Tindall always speaks in the fourth official’s ear throughout the game and we needed to be aware of that.”

Newcastle’s fifth win in a row kept them in third place, and Howe called it “a huge moment in our season”.