Joey Barton has been banned from all football activity for 18 months after admitting a charge from the Football Association in relation to betting.
The Burnley midfielder was found to have placed 1,260 bets on matches between March 26, 2006, and May 13, 2016, which included games he was even involved in.
Barton, who has played for Rangers, QPR, Manchester City and Newcastle, also received a fine worth £30,000 and warned about his future conduct.
However, the 34-year-old has already released a statement to confirm he will appeal against the duration of his ban.
In the 1,500 word post on his own website, Barton revealed he felt he had been treated with more severity than a 'less controversial' player would have.
"The FA have announced I am banned from all football for 18 months and fined £30,000 and costs for offences against The FA’s Betting Rules. I am very disappointed at the harshness of the sanction," Barton wrote.
"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."
Despite admitting he suffers from a gambling addiction and accepting he broke FA regulations, Barton has put some of the blame on football's governing bodies.
The midfielder thinks the prominence of betting companies in football is a dangerous culture for players such as himself.
He added: "But surely they need to accept there is a huge clash between their rules and the culture that surrounds the modern game, where anyone who watches follows football on TV or in the stadia is bombarded by marketing, advertising and sponsorship by betting companies, and where much of the coverage now, on Sky for example, is intertwined with the broadcasters’ own gambling interests.
"That all means this is not an easy environment in which to try to stop gambling, or even to encourage people within the sport that betting is wrong.
"It is like asking a recovering alcoholic to spend all his time in a pub or a brewery. If the FA is serious about tackling gambling I would urge it to reconsider its own dependence on the gambling industry."
Arguably the most shocking aspect is Barton's admission to betting on matches he was involved in.
Importantly, there were also occasions he bet on his team to lose, but only when he was not involved with the matchday squad and denies it had any impact on the outcome of the respective matches.
Barton posted two images revealing the thirty most pertinent bets as determined by the FA.
As you can see below, he didn't seem to have much success.
From the first 15 bets, Barton made a loss of nearly £2,000, winning just one -Georgios Samaras Samaras to be the first goalscorer of a Man City game against Fulham.
In the second 15, the ex-England international lost almost £1,200.
Expect Barton's powerful statement on the FA to open a giant can of worms over the next few weeks!