Brentford coach Thomas Frank has praised the 'inner drive and determination' of Ivan Toney ahead of tonight's Carabao Cup quarter-final against Newcastle United.
Toney will line up against the Magpies for the first time since he was sold by Newcastle in 2018 to join Peterborough United.
The 24-year-old spent two goal-laden seasons with Posh and was named League One Player of the Year last season, earning him a £10million move to Brentford in the summer.
Toney has since been able to transfer his goalscoring form from League One into the Championship, scoring 16 goals in 20 games, and he will be keen to prove a point to his former employers at the Brentford Community Stadium.
Certainly that is the view of Frank, who has backed his star forward to go on and play in the Premier League 'one way or another'.
“I think Ivan has an inner drive and determination to reach the highest possible level,” the Dane said.
“There’s always a situation in all of our careers that inspired us or is irritating us enough to make us work hard every day to try to prove some people wrong.
“I know that Ivan has big ambitions and of course he would like to prove that he could have played in the Premier League.
“It’s not easy to just replace [Watkins],” Frank added. “Show me clubs that just replace a 25-goal striker with another one - we’ve done it, or nearly done it, two times in a row.”
“Ivan has done fantastic and he will play in the Premier League in the future, one way or another, I have no doubt about that. But maybe this way the route for him, the pathway he had to go through to get there. There are so many different pathways for players to go to the top.
“Some of them are Messi and Ronaldo but as far as I know there are only two of them in the world who had that pathway and for the rest it’s a lot of hard work. Some of them take all different kinds of pathways - lower league football, going abroad, coming back - and it’s so difficult.”
