The Pro League is on a par with the Premier League

Ivan Toney missed out on England's qualifiers, but believes the standard of Saudi football is underrated

- John Duerden

Ivan Toney is aware of the outside noise. He hardly needs reminding that plenty of people have had their say since he swapped the Premier League for the Saudi Pro League just over a year ago. An Asian Champions League winner's medal and 35 goals for Al-Ahli later, the striker is defiant, even if he found himself on the outside as England played their latest World Cup qualifiers.

"Those that know me, know that I do what I want to do," Toney says. "If there is something I want to go for, to try, then I will do it. If people want to talk, they can talk. It doesn't hurt me, doesn't bother me, I just concentrate on myself. I do what makes me happy."

Toney is in Jeddah, where the temperature is forecast to be above 40C this weekend. He says he enjoys the beaches and restaurants of a city he describes as "more chill" than Saudi Arabia's capital, Riyadh. He did, though, need time to settle by the Red Sea after his move from Brentford.

"The weather played a massive part," he says. "Somebody should go and try to play in a sauna and see if they can cope. You have to play a different game with different tactics and it is something you adapt to. There are different blocks of 20 minutes where it is intense and then it has to slow down and pick up again."

Starting life at Al-Ahli alongside Roberto Firmino, who left this summer, and Riyad Mahrez helped, and Toney finished last season with 23 league goals, two fewer than Cristiano Ronaldo and two more than Karim Benzema and the Morocco international Abderrazak Hamdallah, who shared third place in the scoring charts.