Brentford striker Ivan Toney has been suspended from all football-related activity with immediate effect for eight months and fined £50,000, the FA has announced. The England international was charged with 262 breaches of the Football Association’s betting rules between 25 February 2017 and 23 January 2021. The FA withdrew 30 of the breaches, and he admitted to the remaining 232. His sanctions were imposed by an independent Regulatory Commission following a hearing. Toney can return to training only with his club for the final four months of his suspension, starting from 17 September 2023. Brentford issued a statement, saying: “Brentford FC notes the decision of an independent Regulatory Commission to issue an eight-month ban from all football and football-related activity to Ivan Toney with immediate effect.” The 27-year-old, who has scored 20 goals for Brentford in the Premier League this season was charged with breaking FA rule E8, which refers to players being barred from betting on games or sharing information for betting purposes. Newcastle and England defender Kieran Trippier was handed a 10 week ban in December 2020 for giving information out for others to bet on his transfer to Atletico Madrid from Tottenham. More follows Read More Man City brush aside Everton to close in on title as Brighton stun Arsenal Brentford vs West Ham LIVE: Latest Premier League updates James Milner came to Liverpool and won the lot - an era ends with his departure

The Hampden roar has often been heard of late for a Manchester United player who was born in England. Just not this particular one. Scott McTominay, after all, was the scourge of Spain and is the joint top scorer in Euro 2024 qualifying, level with Romelu Lukaku and Rasmus Hojlund, just ahead of Cristiano Ronaldo and Harry Kane. Yet this wasn’t a McTominay goal that Scotland’s support were enjoying. The announcement of their scorer over the tannoy was met with the sort of noise that stems from schadenfreude. Harry Maguire, the most prolific centre-back in the history of the England national team, had struck for Scotland. In one respect, it was the product of a teasing cross by Andy Robertson, into the corridor of uncertainty, luring Aaron Ramsdale off his line, forcing Maguire to commit himself, resulting in an unstoppable finish that bisected goalkeeper and near post. And in another way, it had a sad inevitability. These things happen to Maguire. Were his form or luck or touch better, he would have diverted the ball past the goal, or straight to Ramsdale; perhaps missed it altogether. Now his last two goals have come for Scotland and Sevilla. “Just unfortunate,” said Gareth Southgate of his latest mishap, but Maguire can seem the most unfortunate of footballers, the sport’s equivalent of Unlucky Alf from The Fast Show. If something can go wrong, it often does when Maguire is around. For all his shortcomings as a defender – a lack of pace, particularly on the turn, and a capacity to look cumbersome – he seems on an extended run of bad luck that has lasted for around two years, since Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s reign at Old Trafford started to unravel, since his career nosedived. He has lost the United captaincy; but for Southgate’s stubbornness, he may have lost his England place. But now so much with Maguire has a symbolic feel. When Andre Onana made his United debut in pre-season, when a goal was conceded and both Christian Eriksen and Maguire were culpable, it was the world’s most expensive centre-back he subjected to a very public lambasting. When Declan Rice scored the decisive goal for Arsenal against United last Sunday, it took a telling deflection off Maguire. And when it deflects off him, it somehow seems destined to go in. Such is the unrelenting cruelty of being Maguire; in the highest standard of tournament football, he has proved arguably one of the best centre-backs in England’s history and yet is now a figure of fun. “A joke,” said Southgate, though he was referring to the treatment of Maguire, to the unwanted reputation he has acquired, rather than the player. Yet the Scotland faithful bought into it. They cheered when he was brought on at half-time. They spent much of the next 45 minutes taunting him, making every five-yard square pass an event. They sang about Maguire and, ultimately, so did the England support, trying to reclaim him and hail him. “From a Scotland fan’s point of view, I get it, I have no absolutely no complaints of what they did,” Southgate said. “It is a consequence of ridiculous treatment of him for a long period of time, frankly, and I think our fans recognised, ‘Ok, there might be a bit of heat from our own supporters but we are not going to have it from others getting into him.’” Despite England’s ultimate 3-1 victory, it felt like 45 minutes of relentless torment. Perhaps unnecessary torture: Southgate sent him on at half-time when Marc Guehi went off. If Maguire has been barracked by some opposing fans, it was foreseeable that none would be as keen to heckle him as the Scots. England have had a restorative effect on him at times, amid his troubles with United, but there was nothing rejuvenating about this hostility. And Southgate, often the diplomat, became outspoken. He is his favourite defender’s foremost defender. A scapegoat culture has developed. “It is a joke,” he added. “I have never known a player to be treated the way he is; not from the Scottish fans, by our own commentators and pundits. They have created something that is beyond anything I have ever seen. “He has been an absolute stalwart for us in the second-most successful English team for decades. I have talked about the importance of our senior players, he has been crucial amongst that and every time he goes on the field the resilience he shows, the balls he shows is absolutely incredible. So he is a top player and we are all with him. I feel fairly strongly about it, yes.” Southgate’s argument is that Maguire will not hide. “He has fronted up as he always does, which is enormous credit to his character,” he said. The wider argument is that Southgate should hide him, that the rustiness of not playing enough for United will hinder England, that this seems a case of a player being afforded preferential treatment in selection. And thus one of the most torrid nights of Maguire’s career ended up with a resounding endorsement from his manager. But only after the sort of pratfall that may bring more jokes at Maguire’s expense. Read More Jude Bellingham makes centre stage his own as England’s youngest star sees off oldest rivals Terrible football or bad luck? Social media debates Harry Maguire’s ongoing decline Gareth Southgate says Harry Maguire criticism ‘beyond anything I’ve ever seen’ Criticism has not affected Harry Maguire, says England team-mate Aaron Ramsdale ‘Top-level’ England are the benchmark for improving Scotland – Lewis Ferguson Gareth Southgate says Harry Maguire criticism ‘beyond anything I’ve ever seen’

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Scientists have gathered a significant chunk of a distant asteroid, which has made its way to Earth after a mission taking millions of miles. But the really useful work will begin now. Nasa’s Osiris-Rex mission flew to the distant Asteroid Bennu, scooped up a piece of the object into a canister, and then flew back to Earth to drop it off. On Sunday, Nasa picked up that canister in the Utah desert and is now working to secure it. It will then send those samples to a variety of scientists around the world, with a chunk of it being sent to more than 200 people at 38 different institutions across the world. They hope that they can use them as a “time capsule” to peer into the early universe, telling us about where we came from. “This box when it is opened of material from the surface of Bennu can tell us untold secrets of the origins of the universe, the origins of our planet and the origins of life itself,” said Queen musician Brian May, who helped with the research by mapping out the asteroid to find a landing spot. “What an incredibly exciting day.” Sample return missions are particularly exciting to scientists because they offer a look at a pristine piece of a distant world that has been undisturbed by the environment on Earth. While some pieces of asteroids and other objects can fall down to Earth, they have to make their way through the atmosphere and can be damaged and changed in the process. They also mean that researchers are able to use all of the Earth’s latest technology to study the sample. Other pieces of distant worlds have of course been studied by spacecraft and landers, but they are only able to do so with the limited instruments they take to those planets. Another advantage of sample return missions over studying the objects at their home is that scientists can look back at those samples with new sensors and equipment invented long after the sample was actually taken. Many space missions continue for years – Curiosity is still examining Mars after arriving there in 2012, and the Voyager probes are still providing information almost 50 years after they were launched – but they are only able to do so with the technology that was available when they set off. The analysis done in sample return missions really begins when the spacecraft arrives at its target: then, it starts looking at the context of the sample, gathering information about the world from which it came that should prove useful to scientists later. Osiris-Rex arrived at Bennu in 2018, and spent two years mapping the asteroid before it set off back home with its delivery. All of that information in addition to the samples could help answer a variety of questions about our planet, scientists hope. “The asteroids in our solar system contain the raw building blocks from which the Earth was made, so working out their composition will tell us a lot of how our planet formed,” said Boris Gansicke from the department of physics at the University of Warwick. “There are many open questions, for instance, where did the water that we have on Earth come from? And where did the ingredients that made life possible to develop come from? “To answer those questions, ie measure the composition of an asteroid, you need to get your ‘hands’ on them (or in this case the arm of a space mission), and this is what Osiris-Rex achieved. “In a nutshell, it’s similar to sitting in front of a delicious dinner and wanting to have the list of ingredients.” Sample return missions are almost as old as space travel itself, and the first of them were the early Apollo missions, which brought back pieces of the Moon. Those continue to be useful to scientists. Since then, as human travel into space has declined, most of the work has been done by robots. In the early 1970s, the Soviet Union’s Luna missions gathered pieces of the Moon and brought them back, and in 2020 Japan’s Hayabusa2 mission brought back pieces of the asteroid Ryugu. Scientists have high hopes for future missions: perhaps the most discussed is a mission to Mars, which would bring back the first ever pieces of that planet. Engineers have suggested that for decades, and a number of plans have been formed, but none are likely to launch any time soon. Read More Nasa spots shocking number of galaxies like our own Nasa lands Bennu asteroid samples back on Earth Nasa just delivered a piece of a distant asteroid to Earth Pieces of a distant asteroid are about to fall to Earth Nasa to return largest asteroid sample ever as UK helps with research Massive solar flare strikes Nasa spacecraft sent to study Sun