Beesotted’s Jim Levack shares his thoughts on one of Brentford’s unsung heroes and asks whether Vitaly Janelt is saving his best until last as The Bees look for play-off success.
“He’s an absolute machine… when he gets knocked down, he just gets back up again and doesn’t let anything negative affect him in a game. His mentality is perfect.”
The words of Thomas Frank to describe arguably one of Brentford’s best-ever signings will have even more resonance in the course of the next few weeks.
We’ve been here before and know there’ll be ups and downs in the emotional roller coaster to come. Luck will play a part but with Vitaly Janelt in the side, Brentford have their best chance ever to make the next step.
His arrival on the scene has coincided with a less flamboyant and more efficient way of playing that has, let no one forget, seen the Bees go 12 games without tasting defeat.
In any other season Janelt would walk the Player of the Year award. His performances have never once dipped below an eight, he is consistency personified and is, as Thomas Frank says, an example to all his team-mates in how not to let temporary adversity affect you.
That kind of resilience will be critical in the next fortnight, but – and this is a big but that will have some sections of the new Griffin Park (I can’t bring myself to say Community Stadium yet) faithful screaming at their screens… I’m relaxed whether we go up or not.
There, I’ve said it. Buried it in the sixth paragraph because I know it’s bordering on herecy. So let me qualify it a little.
I’ve been watching Brentford for decades, a fact brought home to me as the League 2 ups and downs panned out recently with clubs like Bolton, Cheltenham and Carlisle fighting for the right to reach the next tier. Clubs we once played regularly.
I’d love to see us in the top flight playing our trade against the best, and I’m confident that we have a squad capable of mixing it at that level. It’s something I’ve dreamed of all my life and would be a big tick in the box of life’s achievements.
But this time feels different. There’s no expectation and the only pressure will most pikely be created by the knee-jerk armchair army who haven’t lived through snow-covered trips to Carlisle for a defeat and the pathetic racist insults aimed at Carl Hutchings by the natives.
So let me find my ‘happy clapper’ bucket hat and remind them of a few things. We’ve:
- Just finished third in the most competitive and entertaining league on the planet.
- Tweaked our style to add a steel to the way we play and that is a congested season like no other.
- Gone 21 and 12 unbeaten.
- Taken 24 points from the last 12.
- Reached 87 points – enough to have promoted us in eight of the last 17 seasons.
- Scored the most Championship goals for the second year in a row.
- Been proud to have the top scorer for the second year in row – a record breaker by the way.
- Recorded the fewest defeats with the second-best goal difference.
Strangely though, that’s not enough for some fans who will – if we don’t bring a three-goal lead back to west London – take to their laptops to vent.
It might come from the right place. Passion, a desperate desire to see us in the Premier League, anger, frustration or any other of a maelstrom of emotions that prompts them to post or tweet first and think later.
I get it. Ask anyone who played football with me and I was fiery, on the edge, passionate – but it made me the lethal (coughs) finisher I was. Did I mention I once scored a hat-trick at Griffin Park? Yes, dad, once or twice. My kids keep me grounded.
Thomas Frank calls it the “noise” – the social media muttering and negativity which makes no allowances for the fact that the players are actual human beings with feelings and emotions. That’s not woke nonsense either, if someone tells me I’ve written a sxxx story, it plays on my mind.
I’ll come clean here too. Like some others I was critical of Sergi Canos at the start of the season to close friends, but unlike some others, NEVER publicly.
His resurgence has showed how little I know about football and reinforced my view that social media and message boards are often hotbeds of ignorance and negativity.
Canos was partly a victim of the pandemic because trust me, watching football in an empty stadium is a soulless, empty experience. Playing in one must be equally as hard.
So perhaps what matters most now is that we all return to be together to watch our side, whether that’s striving to compete with the might of Man City or hammering seven past Wycombe.
This might be our year, it might not. But whatever happens over the next three games let’s keep it positive and then gather our thoughts and debate what went right or wrong when the time’s right.
Promotion or not, we’ll all be back next season… apart from the social media warriors who couldn’t wait just that little longer for success.
And frankly, they’ll be no great loss.
Jim Levack
