“Used as puppets…” - Why Brentford won’t take the knee against Sheffield Wednesday and beyond
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A taking of the knee has been commonplace in English football for a number of months now as the sport tried to do play a part in raising awareness for the inequalities so obviously on show in society, but there have been question marks over how much impact it has had.
Brentford aren’t the first team to make the decision to try and do more elsewhere instead, and the Championship’s leading goalscorer says that they feel like footballers have been ‘used as puppets’.
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Hide AdHe told Sky Sports. "We have had a long discussion about that; why we are not taking a knee… Everyone has had their say, and everyone agrees we have been taking the knee for however long now and still nothing has changed.
"We are kind of being used as puppets, in my eyes; take the knee and the people at the top can rest for a while now, which is pretty silly and pretty pointless. Nothing is changing.
"The punishments need to be stronger. You're going to do so much and, in a way, you have to get that helping hand, but it doesn't look like it's coming at the moment. So you have to push for that and hopefully things change.
"You have to try and educate people more but the question is, do people want to be educated? That's another topic. You can only do so much, you can only try and help certain people. You can lead a horse to water but you can't force him to drink.
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Hide Ad"The club is working extremely hard behind the scenes to try and make the extra impact. I think that's big because the diversity in our team is massive. You have people from different backgrounds and we are all working together towards the same goal. That's key to have really.”
Toney is a doubt for the clash with Wednesday tomorrow night, but will be eager to get back amongst the goals as soon as possible and add to his impressive tally of 24 goals in 30 games.