Beesotted’s Condorman puts his words on a plate. And eats them:
Shortly after the Sheffield United game I wrote an article titled “We are going up”. Fuelled with optimism about our fantastic football, mental toughness and strength in depth… I was absolutely convinced that we would be promoted. Automatically.
It turns out, however, that the Blades are the early season whipping boys. It probably won’t last, but their performance against us has been emulated regularly elsewhere. It’s not us, it’s them, it would appear.
The myth of our strength in depth was then blown away with that sorry defeat at Derby County, witnessed by 500 loyal, but humiliated, travelling fans. Our strength of mind disappeared with the dismissal of David Button in the 4-0 drubbing at Bradford.
The 4-3 win at struggling Tranmere showed a glimmer of hope, but last night’s loss to Leyton Orient exposed the fact that, once more, we are simply not ruthless enough. Whilst we might find solace in moaning about the penalty awarded to the East Londoners, their second goal showed the cutting edge and self-belief that is sorely lacking right now at Griffin Park.
Over the summer Uwe Rosler added some delightful ingredients to the mix, but for whatever reason, this promotion cake isn’t currently rising. And it’s starting to leave a bad taste in the mouth.
We’ve added some steel to the side in McCormack and Taylor, but we still seem to be bullied at times. We’ve added a 20-goal striker in Will Grigg but still look incredibly disjointed up front, and our leading scorer, Farid El Alagui, is parked on the bench.
Successful teams have striking combinations that work well together – think back to The FT Index of Forster and Taylor, or Burgess and Owusu – we’ve currently got some talented individuals playing as, erm, individuals.
Successful teams punish their opponents mistakes, getting behind their defence and causing some pain. For all our shots last night, we didn’t really get at Orient, instead lofting meek diagonal balls at a double-marked Grigg or Clayton. Good luck with that tactic.
Successful teams keep working ’til the final whistle. We did this so many times last season. Last night we more or less gave up after the penalty and our substitutions semed to confuse everything and everyone.
Successful teams have a game plan and stick to it. I think I’m right in saying that Leyton had players with shirt numbers 1-11 on the pitch last night. We chopped and changed again. Partly due to injury. Partly, in my opinion, because our own size of squad is Rosler’s biggest weakness. He tinkers too much without noticeable improvement.
Some of my original sentiment still holds firm. We do play some great football – albeit not always in dangerous areas. And we’ve got some fantastic players and the best resources at the club that I can remember.
I think we have some honest players at our club currently. If those players are honest with themselves at the moment, their performances are just not good enough. To use a hackneyed football phrase we need them to give ‘110%’ if we are serious about promotion. Too often it feels like we are going through the motions without that inner belief that we will win the game and those valuable/essential three points.
Of course a season isn’t decided in the first eight games – but if we have a realistic ambition of reaching the Championship (rather than a spoken one) then we need to get our act together quickly and address these shortcomings.
Or some of our expensive cake ingredients will end up in the bin. Along with the chef.
Come on you Reds
Condorman (@thecondorman)
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Due to sickness yesterday was the first Bees game I have missed this season. I agree with pretty much all the views expressed in this entire article – except watching on telly it was a stone wall penalty for them – but I especially agree about the players seemingly going through the motions. It was even more apparent watching on screen, rather than on the terrace as per normal, that some players either weren’t sure what they were meant to be doing, or didn’t care.
This is going to sound like sacrilege but I am not sure that Clayton Donaldson is in the best run of form at present and deserving of a place in the starting line-up (He will now go on to score 4 at Northampton/Coventry on Sunday and I will cheer every goal). I was surprised that it was Will Grigg, and not Donaldson, that was substituted after about 75 minutes. I know they are similar players but I really would like to see Farid El Alagui and Grigg play together. On several occasions the commentator made reference to the height of the Brentford team but given that we aren’t sending out a team to play cricket in Australia, maybe some football played to feet in the style we saw against Sheffield Utd would have served us better last night. It just worries me that Uwe might think El Alagui is the type of player he would like to see go out on loan to gain some playing time. Should El Alagui be starting, with Donaldson available to play the role of impact sub? Worth a try surely?
One final, and deeply troubling, thought. Have we seen this lack of heart before from Brentford players? Anybody remember that night of February 3rd 2011 when the players clearly had had enough of Andy Scott, and demonstrated that on the pitch at Dagenham? I was there, and boy was that depressing. I simply hope we are not seeing the first signs of players wanting to see a change in management style. We are a good team, we have good players and we have good management. Lets just keep the faith – and start winning tight games!