So, transfer deadline day has come and gone, and although there is one rather large question mark hanging over Lasse Vibe’s future at Brentford and final confirmation on whether he’ll be joining the Chinese club or not, most Brentford supporters will be breathing a rather big sigh of relief this morning.

Bees fans were rightly concerned that the looming deadline could, once again, see club’s with bigger wage budgets swoop in for our finest – Ollie Watkins, Ryan Woods, Alan Judge, Romain Sawyers, Dan Bentley, Yoann Barbet, Andreas Bjelland had all had transfer rumours circulating that included their names, however, all remain at Griffin Park for the foreseeable future, which is great news for many reasons.

In the end, the final day of transfer activity in TW8 centered around a player who is just emerging as a Brentford first-teamer – a player who, in just a handful of starts for the Bees, has already made Premier League scouts and managers jump into action to try and secure his signature… a certain Chris Mepham.

Regular listeners to the Beesotted Pride of West London Podcast will be aware that, following Bournemouth manager Eddie Howe’s appearance in the Braemar Road stand for the Bolton match (and again last weekend), we had been talking about the likelihood of Mepham being on the Cherries radar… and so it proved to be with a deal of £8m being dangled in front of our noses. But it proved nowehere near enough.

Beesotted can confirm that two large bids were made on deadline day, which were both snubbed by our club who, in doing so, have made it clear that they see Mepham as central to their plans going forwards – a player with international quality and captaincy potential.

Make no mistake, £8m for a player who is yet to make 15 appearances for the club is a huge amount of money, but credit to the decision makers in not only having the confidence in the player, but also for turning their noses up at what is a considerable windfall.

Gone are the days that Brentford will accept derisory offers for our best players – yes we are still a selling club – but at our price. We understand we value Mepham north of £12m, a figure that may  increase futher with time and further experience.

Mepham’s progress will almost certainly be followed with even more scrutiny from here on in, and assuming he continues as he has, no doubt there will be further offers in the summer, but for now, we can all forget about the threat of losing players for the time being and get on with enjoying whatever the rest of this season has to bring.

Dave Lane
@beesotted100

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