Billy “The Bee” Grant and Laney were back for the pre-Hull podcast, with plenty to clear up from the Liverpool defeat before looking ahead to Sunday’s clash with The Tigers. Here’s six things worth knowing from this week’s podcast.
Genuine fans are losing out to touts under the new ticketing rules
The club’s digital ticketing for Category A+ games is meant to shut touting down, but it isn’t working cleanly yet. One fan emailed Billy after being told he couldn’t pass his spare ticket to a friend without a 100+ membership, so he put it on the exchange instead – and it ended up in the hands of two Liverpool fans. “They paid 250 pounds, and they bought it from a site called footballticket.net,” Billy explained, adding that the fan has now reported it and the club is investigating. Laney’s sympathy was obvious: “He’s done the right thing and it’s kind of backfired – he’s obviously feeling a bit of a mug.” Billy had spotted touts outside the ground himself on Saturday, admitting he still has no idea how the system is being got round: “It baffles me – it’s hard enough for a legitimate fan to get tickets for these games. If it’s possible, it just needs to be shut down.”
A rugby ball landed in the ground during the Liverpool game, and it’s now a police matter
Someone on the roof of the flats next to the stadium kicked a rugby ball onto the pitch mid-match, filmed it, and shared it – and it’s now gone far enough that police are looking into it, given the height involved. Laney wasn’t impressed: “He didn’t just do it, he did it to share. It’s a dumb thing to do – I’m not sure a rugby ball can kill you, but it’s gonna hurt and it’s gonna knock you sparko.”
The red cards changed the game – don’t read more into it than that
Billy and Laney were clear that the first defeat of the season wasn’t a sign of anything deeper wrong with the squad. “You can’t play Liverpool with ten men, let alone nine,” said Laney, pointing out Brentford were still pushing for an equaliser deep into stoppage time before going down to nine. He had real praise for how Yarmoliuk handled the red card itself: “He’s gone on social media and apologised – it’s very difficult to then look for excuses beyond that. He did a very classy thing, a very mature thing. I wasn’t expecting him to – other players wouldn’t have done that.” Billy also flagged that plenty of Liverpool’s own fans felt Brentford had the better of it: a number were saying that “if it weren’t ten men, if it was eleven men, Brentford would have crucified us.”
JB’s stats dug up some proper history
No Brentford player had been sent off in 25 previous matches against Liverpool – until Saturday produced two. “It was a double red for the tenth time in our 100-year league history,” JB revealed, with this one the fourth to happen in a home game and the first at the current stadium. He also traced a neat loop back to Harry Curtis, the club’s legendary 1930s manager: Curtis was a football league referee before going into management, and it was Curtis himself who sent off Brentford’s first-ever dismissed player, Alf Capper, back in 1922 – “for disputing a throw-in decision by a linesman rather too vigorously.”
Hull are tricky, low on goals, and Brentford go there short-handed
With Janelt and Yarmoliuk both suspended, Keith Andrews has options in Sangaré, Carvalho, Jensen and Damsgaard but nothing like-for-like. Hull fan Imo Prescott, speaking to Billy for the podcast’s part one, was refreshingly level-headed about her side’s start: “If you told us we’d be top half seven games into the season, we would be absolutely delighted… I will take 17th right now. It is a long season, it is a slog, and all that matters is staying up.” She did flag a concern that chimed with the numbers – Hull have scored only six goals all season, and “if McBurnie’s not scoring at the moment and nobody else is, that may be a little bit of a worry.” Jacob “The Gowler” Gowler’s stats backed it up on Bees Breakdown: “They have eight points with five expected points… they’ve given up 7.39 xG but only conceded four goals,” largely thanks to a strong goalkeeper. Laney’s instruction for Sunday was simple: “We have to be on our A-game, be classy, no mistakes.” Billy went for a 2-0 Brentford win; Laney backed a 1-1 draw.
The midfield options exist, but nobody’s pretending they’re like-for-like
Losing Janelt and Yarmoliuk together is a specific kind of problem, not just a numbers one. “We’re fortunate we’ve got Mamadou Sangaré, we’re fortunate we’ve got Fabio Carvalho, we’re fortunate we’ve got Matt Jensen and Damsgaard who came off the bench,” said Laney, “so we have got options – they’re not like-for-like, we’re gonna miss a bit of steel in the middle there, because Yarmou and Janelt were the kind of enforcers. They did a lot of the running and a lot of the big tackles. The others are a bit more flair.” He floated Aaron Hickey as a possible solution too, recalling Keith Andrews talking on the podcast about Hickey “morphing into a midfielder” as his career develops, and ruled out Nathan Collins dropping into midfield despite him playing there for Ireland: “I can’t see that happening – I can probably see Hickey coming in.” Asked if the double absence worried him, Laney admitted it would be easier with just one missing: “They’re too similar players, aren’t they.” Billy saw a silver lining in it regardless, given the running debate about Brentford’s midfield balance: “A lot of people have been questioning our creativity with having those two in the midfield – maybe this forces us into a situation where we’re going to have to play one more of a defensive player like Sangaré, who’s the energy person, and revert back to how we used to roll, with a couple of more creative players in there.” He also pointed to Keane Lewis-Potter as an option worth remembering: “KLP is another one you could argue could fit in the middle – he’s Mr Versatile.”
