England striker Ivan Toney will face trial over an alleged assault at a London nightclub in summer 2028.<\/p>\n
The 30-year-old is accused of headbutting and punching Saber Da Silva during a confrontation at a nightclub in Wardour Street, central London, on December 6 last year.<\/p>\n
Toney appeared at Southwark Crown Court on Thursday morning and formally entered a not guilty plea to a charge of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.<\/p>\n
During the five-minute hearing, a provisional trial date was set for the same court on June 12, 2028 by Judge Christopher Hehir, who told the defendant he was “sorry” about the delay.<\/p>\n
He said: “That’s a long way in advance and I’m sorry about that. As you may know, the crown courts are operating under a great deal of pressure. We have got a massive backlog of work for various reasons.”<\/p>\n
Toney arrived at court at around 9.10am wearing black sunglasses, grey trousers and a button-up jacket over a shirt and tie.<\/p>\n
He was released on unconditional bail after the brief hearing.<\/p>\n
An earlier hearing was told the alleged assault happened at the 100 Wardour Street club during a confrontation between the defendant and Mr Da Silva.<\/p>\n
It was heard the two men “squared up to each other”, before Toney allegedly “lunged forward and headbutted the complainant, followed by a few punches”.<\/p>\n
The criminal case came after a Metropolitan Police investigation and the charge was announced in late July.<\/p>\n
Toney represented England at this summer’s World Cup and has made 10 international appearances and scored one goal.<\/p>\n
He missed out on the latest squad for the country’s Nations League fixtures.<\/p>\n
Toney started his career with Northampton and made permanent moves to Newcastle and Peterborough before signing for Brentford in 2020.<\/p>\n
He scored 72 goals during four years with the Bees before making a surprise switch in 2024 to Saudi Pro League club Al-Ahli.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England striker Ivan Toney will face trial over an alleged assault at a London nightclub in summer 2028.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":817610,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[59,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-817609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-gb","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=817609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/817610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=817609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=817609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=817609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}