Billy “The Bee” Grant and Dave “Laney” Lane were back after the longest international break known to man, and there was a lot to get through before tomorrow’s trip to Villa Park – a Chelsea win worth properly savouring, an injury nobody wanted, and a set of numbers that have both hosts fancying this one. Here’s ten things we took from it.
1. The break claimed a big one – Damsgaard’s injury is a genuine blow
Mikkel Damsgaard rolled his ankle in Denmark’s game against Portugal after what both hosts described as a horribly late challenge. “It looked like a straight red, the player got booked for it, but it looked a red,” said Laney, and the prognosis – out until at least December – is exactly the kind of news nobody wants two months into a season this promising. “We’ve lost one of our most influential players for what is a very, very important second phase of the early season,” Laney added, and with Mathias Jensen also still missing, Brentford head to Villa Park without either of their natural number tens.
2. Go and watch Kristoffer Ajer’s goal for Norway if you haven’t already
Not every Brentford player had a bad international break. Ajer scored what both hosts rated among the best goals of the entire window for Norway – struck with such force the bench reportedly “went absolutely potty,” in Billy’s words. “If that goal was scored by Argentina or Brazil, everyone would be talking about it from now until Kingdom come,” he said. High praise for a centre-back who, as Billy noted, has gone from a player some supporters weren’t fully convinced by to one “turned into quite an elite player” inside six months.
3. Beating Chelsea at home was overdue, and long-awaited
Three wins at Stamford Bridge over the years but never once at home – until now. “It was brilliant, another one of those landmark nights under the lights at the GTech,” said Laney, calling the 3-0 scoreline “the perfect way to finish off the first opening round of fixtures” before the break, and doing it unbeaten. JB’s stats segment put the scale of it in context: Brentford’s first home league win over Chelsea since 1938, and the club’s best unbeaten start to any top-flight campaign in their history.
4. Thiago’s goal ended a 160-day wait – and answered his critics
Igor Thiago hadn’t scored from open play since Everton visited back in April, and the pressure of that drought was visible the moment the ball went in. “He ripped his shirt off and got booked, which he probably shouldn’t have done, but you can’t really blame him for that kind of raw emotion,” said Laney. Both hosts agreed it mattered as much for what it said about Thiago’s state of mind as for the goal itself – a forward answering, in real time, the people who’d quietly started wondering if last season was a one-off.
5. Carvalho is quietly becoming the go-to man off the bench
Fabio Carvalho scored against Chelsea having also scored in the League Cup against Reading days earlier, making him the first Brentford player to find the net in back-to-back appearances this season – and, as JB pointed out, the club’s first league goalscoring substitute of the campaign, exactly as he was in the corresponding fixture last season. With Damsgaard and Jensen both missing for Villa, there’s a real chance Carvalho gets his opportunity from the start rather than off the bench this time.
6. Schuster was rated the best player on the pitch – again
Jannik Schuster picked up an 8.3 rating according to WhoScored for the Chelsea win, ahead of Ajer’s Nations League heroics, Thiago and Caoimhín Kelleher. “Big up to Schuster, absolute quality,” read one fan contribution on the post-match vox pops. For a player thrown in as emergency cover only weeks ago, it’s becoming harder by the week to imagine the back line without him.
7. Dropping Sangaré isn’t a crisis – it’s what a deep squad is for
Both hosts addressed the slight unease among supporters about Mamadou Sangaré’s recent absences from the starting eleven head-on. “It wasn’t a demotion – it’s what a deep squad is for,” Billy said, pointing to Bees Breakdown’s analysis of how Keith Andrews has been able to reshape the midfield to suit the opposition without the team suffering for it. The theory goes that Sangaré, hyped heavily after his debut, is still adjusting to the pace and patterns of Premier League football – and that the manager now has, as Laney put it, “a pack of cards he can shuffle” depending on who Brentford are facing.
8. The so-called “big six” should be worried about this Bermuda Triangle
Billy was unapologetic about enjoying the shift in perception – Brentford, Brighton and Bournemouth increasingly spoken about as sides the traditional “big six” would rather avoid than welcome. “I quite like that feeling, don’t you – knowing you go into a stadium thinking actually, for once, we might nick a win there,” he said, with Old Trafford pointedly named as one of the last grounds still to properly fall.
9. The numbers make Villa the opportunity, not the threat
According to Bees Breakdown’s data, Aston Villa sit bottom of the league for shots, touches in the box and aerial duels won, and are leaking possession more than anyone else in the division. WhoScored’s strengths-and-weaknesses breakdown was even starker – no significant strengths listed for Villa at all, with individual errors, wide defending and aerial duels flagged as particular weak points against a Brentford side that leads the league for aerial duels per match from set pieces. “Opportunity knocks,” said Laney.
10. Even a Villa fan can’t find much to argue with
Hatchet, from the Sutton Coldfield Villa Crew and a regular face at the Globe before games, gave both hosts an honest Villa preview – injuries and a reshuffled back four still bedding in, real respect for how Brentford have started the season (“you’re brilliant, can’t fault it at all”), and a prediction of 1-1. Laney backed the same scoreline; Billy went bolder, calling it 2-0 to the Bees. Either way, nobody on this podcast fancies Villa’s chances much more than Villa’s own supporters do.
Join our prediction league and get your own predictions in at besotted.football.scoreline.com
Catch the full Bees Breakdown episode and the Besotted Reloaded archive series at Pride of West London
Listen out for the post-match podcast straight after the final whistle on Saturday.
Come on you Bees.
