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Beesotted columnist Toby Maxtone-Smith feels Brentford’s bad day at the Rotherham office needs to be forgotten and we should move on quickly and look forward to a day out in Oldham where Brentford can make amends

How do you respond to a game like that? A game where the Bees weren’t unlucky, or beaten by a 93rd minute winner. A game where every 50/50 ball went the opposition’s way. A game in which the referee seemed to get everything pretty much right. A game in which the Brentford team, to a man, did not turn up.

The 3-0 defeat last night to a mightily impressive Rotherham United side was our worst performance since that pivotal match at Stevenage all those months ago. Nothing good can be said about the performance; the Millers were completely comfortable and deserved the points.

Listening to snatches of conversation from the 572 Brentford fans (not bad for a Tuesday night oop norf) trudging out of the New York Stadium the finger was being pointed at a wide number of people.

‘Judge was sh!t’

‘Trotta did nothing’

‘Forshaw’s passing was completely off tonight’

All these are true statements, but they could be said about the whole XI last night. No one could be proud of their performance, and I’m sure Mark Warburton will have made that clear to them.

So then, how do you respond to a game like that? Is it a reality check? A game that, despite the excellent performances that came before it, was so poor that we have to analyse it in great detail to see where we went wrong. Or was the game just a write-off? One about which to say ‘bad day at the office, let’s move on to the next one’

I tend towards the latter view. The performance was so out of keeping with the Brentford we have come to know over the past few months. We can all moan at the performance – I wasn’t particularly happy walking aimlessly around Trafalgar at 2am last night searching for my (second) night-bus home – but Warburton has stuck to the old mantra of ‘never too high when you win; never too low when you lose’, and it is crucial we don’t let the result halt our momentum by overanalysing it. We’d won our last four games, all with good performances, and we should be looking at what we did right in those games more than what we did wrong in South Yorkshire.

Nine games left, starting with two more treks up north on Saturday, to Oldham, and on Tuesday, to Sheffield. Two difficult games against teams with lots still to play for. We needed a 93rd minute winner from Jonathan Douglas to get past Oldham in Warburton’s first game, and so we know we can take nothing for granted at Boundary Park.

I’m not being Erik the Red, who discovered Greenland and called it ‘green’ to try and entice his fellow Vikings to come and settle there, when I say that Oldham is a surprisingly good awayday. It’s a twenty-five minute cab journey from Manchester Piccadilly, and there are buses and trams going there as well, so if you’re in two minds about coming on Saturday I’d fully recommend it. After all, fingers crossed, we won’t be going there next season.

Come on you Bees!

Toby Maxtone-Smith
@TRMaxtoneSmith