There’s a moment on this week’s podcast where Sherlock admits he’s watched Match of the Day three times just to hear Alan Shearer lose his mind about Brentford’s performance. Not to watch the goals again – he was there, he saw them – but because it still doesn’t feel real that pundits are falling over themselves to praise Brentford. Welcome to the best week possible opening week to the season ever.
Spurs arrived with £300 million of summer spending behind them and left with nothing, humiliated 3-0 in a performance so complete the Beesotted crew could barely find a negative to argue about. It was our first home win over Tottenham since 1948 – think about that, 1948 – and the best start we’ve ever managed in the top flight. Man for man, “Brentford were better than every single Spurs player on the pitch, and the stats back the eye test up: 3.87 expected goals to Tottenham’s 0.57, sixteen interceptions to their four, sixty-four per cent of aerial duels won.” Sangaré, one competitive game into his Brentford career, ran the midfield so completely that it’s hard not to get carried away and he’s clearly a better buy than Sandro Tonali. Alongside him, £500,000 Vitaly Janelt was magnificent.
Four days later, The Bees did it again – Birmingham City were on the wrong end of a 6-1 shellacking in the League Cup, and Brentford didn’t even start their strongest side. After the match a Birmingham pub bouncer collared Billy, convinced he’d just watched our first team; he hadn’t, not really, though by the time Keith Andrews had rung the changes and brought Tiago, Sangaré and Michael Kayode on, it might as well have been. Callum Wilson scored inside five minutes of his debut. Skipper Nathan Collins, a centre-back, helped himself to a League Cup brace – the first Brentford defender to manage that in fifty years, joining a list that includes Mickey Droy and Jim McNichol. Nineteen-year-old Jannik Schuster took a lesson in Championship-standard pace the hard way, but he’ll learn from the exposure.
What makes these two matches even more fascinating isn’t just the results, it’s the performances. Rewind to preseason and the signs were there, even if we didn’t fully trust our instincts. That poor Rennes team we brushed aside were 2-0 up against PSG last weekend before drawing 2-2 against the French Champions…. That awful Frankfurt side we beat 7-0, well they won 11-0 themselves in their first match of the season. Maybe we really are that good.
There’s sadness mixed in with the euphoria too. Ethan Pinnock, one of the true architects of this club’s rise from Championship also-rans to Premier League established, has left for Coventry for around £6 million after eight years of unheralded excellence, and – cruelly – we don’t get a home fixture to send him off properly. He’ll get his guard of honour whenever he returns for sure, but for now Brentford’s business model does what it always does: sell smart, reinvest smarter, and let Ollie Watkins’ and Ezri Konsa’s old sell-on clauses keep topping up the coffers.
West Ham’s young left-back Malick Diouf has been on-again, off-again for weeks: Brentford like him, West Ham want silly money, and if it doesn’t happen, well, we have cover in Rico Henry, Aaron Hickey and Keane Lewis-Potter. If Diouf arrives, the interesting knock-on is what it does for KLP, will he be freed at last to push forward into the role he was actually signed to play. Time will tell.
Even a QPR legend has woken up and smelt the coffee with Les Ferdinand musing on The Overlap that Brentford could be Champions League contenders this season… wonders will never cease.
A trip to Leeds United this weekend will be the toughest test yet, but I get the impression that, at this moment in time, that challenge will be relished by the coaches and players. Something special is in the air, and we will need games like Sunday to establish whether that sweet scent is going to waft around for some time to come… or not.
Dave Lane
