Burnley midfielder Joey Barton has been suspended for 18 months, and fined £30,000, after admitting an FA charge in relation to betting.
Barton was alleged to have placed 1,260 bets on football over a 10-year period from 2006 to 2016, with the 34-year-old admitting the charge in February.
In a statement this afternoon, he has described the ban as "harsh", adding that he will be appealing it in a bid to save his career.
"I am very disappointed at the harshness of the sanction. The decision effectively forces me into an early retirement from playing football. To be clear from the outset here this is not match fixing and at no point in any of this is my integrity in question," he says.
"I accept that I broke the rules governing professional footballers, but I do feel the penalty is heavier than it might be for other less controversial players. I have fought addiction to gambling and provided the FA with a medical report about my problem. I’m disappointed it wasn’t taken into proper consideration.
"Having consulted with my friends and lawyers, I have decided I will be appealing against the length of the ban. I hope that I shall be afforded a fair hearing by an independent Appeal Panel. If I am, we are confident that the sanction will be reduced to a fair one that both reflects the offences as well as the mitigating factors and the fact that there was nothing untoward or suspicious about the bets I made."
Several of the bets made by Barton were on his own team to lose, but he claims he never bet against his own team on a match he was playing in.
"One thing I can state with absolute certainty – I have never placed a bet against my own team when in a position to influence the game, and I am pleased that in all of the interviews with the FA, and at the hearing, my integrity on that point has never been in question. I could not live with myself, nor face my team-mates or the fans of the clubs I played for, if they seriously thought I would bet on my team to lose a game whose outcome I could influence."
However, Barton did bet on one game he was playing in, backing himself to be first goalscorer for Manchester City in a game against Fulham in 2006, as well as laying on his teammate Georgios Samaras doing likewise.
You can read Barton's full statement here, where he reveals the details of the most pertinent bets.
