The video that has sparked wild speculation around Sandro Tonali. And why Man United should think again about Dan Ashworth

It's ever so easy to be wise after the event, which is why there’s a clip circulating on social media of an unwise yellow card Sandro Tonali picked up when the going was good.

We might consider that opening-day game against Aston Villa a collector’s item by now – that was his first for Newcastle and there have only been 12. It was also his best by a street, with a fine goal and contributions to three others in a 5-1 win.

He was brilliant, delivering the kind of performance that can make £52million feel like a bargain, if only for a while. It wasn’t just how he slipped through lines and found holes in small spaces, but it was his defending, too. His chasing. His squeezing. So the good bits and ugly bits.

But there was one strange bit and that lives at the heart of the clip, because in stoppage time, with the game comfortably won, Tonali was booked in the process of being subbed off.

It’s a confused scene – the fourth official wanted him to hurry up and Elliot Anderson was ready to come on. Tonali? He stood still for a moment or two and then took a step towards the sidelines, before pivoting back again in the direction of the referee, Andy Madley. Why so hesitant and agitated? Only he knows but it was quite unusual at 5-1.

The clip catches the final 11 seconds of this before Madley had enough and pulled a yellow card for time-wasting. All a trifle odd, really, and otherwise innocuous, except the innocuous can find oxygen in a certain context. 

And of course the Tonali context is the 10-month ban subsequently imposed on him by Italian authorities in October for placing an awful lot of bets on football during his time there. A ban that was followed this week by 50 charges from the FA for betting on matches since he arrived at Newcastle in July.

We can call that initial ban ‘the event’ and the problem is how other events, such as the one in that clip, can look to outsiders in their wisdom when so little is known in the Tonali case. 

That clip has taken on a life of its own. So might a clip of him getting booked against Manchester City six weeks later for kicking the ball away after conceding a foul. Is it daftness? Impetuosity? Or, does our unfettered imagination lead some to ask a question in a way that may or may not be wise: is anything else going on?

The point is we don’t know, and there is no suggestion here that a link exists. No suggestion of him getting booked deliberately and no evidence whatsoever that Tonali’s betting reached into those places. None.

It is symptomatic of social media that the worst conclusions are being drawn. And yet this on him. By gambling on football he has gambled on his reputation. He has given breathing room for folk to have a few doubts about what he’s made of – the Villa clip, which was captioned on Thursday to say, with no substance, that he ‘purposely’ got that yellow card, had been watched 3.7million times in 21 hours liked by 24,000 accounts.

Those social media users are being wise after the event, or outright wrong, or darkly tribal, but the doubt has been given licence to grow. That is Tonali’s cloud and Newcastle United must live under it.  

Benefit of the doubt? I’d rather wait until a little more information falls down about what kind of bets he placed and when before deciding on that one.

What we do know is football has a dangerously hypocritical relationship with the gambling industry and that the rules Tonali has broken exist, at their root, as a safeguard against integrity problems on the field. Because who wants to doubt what they see when we watch sport?

What confuses me in this particular saga is the strength of sympathy from Newcastle. I get it up to a point – Tonali admits he is an addict in service to a corrosive disease and Newcastle say he has been admirably open with them. They have a duty of care, even to the careless. They know the person in the middle of a storm.

Naturally, they also know things they aren’t currently sharing, as is their right and responsibility for an ongoing process. 

And we can deduce from Eddie Howe that he is more informed than most. We can see from his pleas for leniency on Friday – ‘Let’s not throw the book at him and punish him even further’ – are likely based on knowledge that won’t come back to bite his backside.

But let’s not confuse one point here – stupidity very definitely lives within this mystery. A disease, yes. But stupidity, too. Tonali could have bet on cricket, horses, golf, boxing, lawn bowls. He could have bet on stocks or rain drops running down a windowpane. He chose football and he chose it often. He chose it at AC Milan and Brescia and he is accused of choosing it at Newcastle, as well, despite all the warnings and precedents.

Precedents like that of his own team-mate, Kieran Trippier, who lost 10 weeks of his career to betting infractions, as one example. Tonali’s stupidity led him away from all of that and so I don’t only see a victim of illness. I see a victim and a perpetrator, with Newcastle’s season and PSR calculations the collateral damage. They ought to be seething both at the player and possibly even those on the staff who missed any clues.

Were they sold a time bomb by AC Milan? Did they know what was about to go off? It does make you wonder about their apparent desire to offload Tonali last summer – a decision that apparently left the player in tears and feeling ‘lost’.

It also makes you think about Dan Ashworth and the Teflon qualities of directors of football in general. Howe is carrying the can for performances this season, but what about the due diligence of a man in Ashworth whose attention to detail is heralded as a reason for Manchester United’s pursuit of him? 

To see Newcastle’s struggles, especially in midfield, is to trace the issue to those who signed off on the £52m without knowing the bets under the bed.

Maybe some details are too hard to obtain, even in this age where some sporting teams hire private investigators to know all there is to know. But it does make you think back to a quote in the summer from their chief executive, Darren Eales: ‘We would struggle to have a signing that was a total miss, because we just don’t have the resources yet from a revenue perspective.’

That was framed in the context of Financial Fair Play and came in the days before Tonali made himself look like he would be a spectacular hit against Aston Villa. He really was great that day.

If it isn’t being a little too wise after the event, you might suggest that so much since then, including Ashworth’s ability to walk on water and Tonali’s sbility to walk from a field, is shrouded in a bit more doubt.

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