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Bees-fan journalist, Jim Levack, looks at the avalanche of column inches and coverage that Mark Warburton’s Brentford are being granted in the Press – attention that has coincided with the side’s remarkable march up the Championship league table.

This ‘pinch yourself‘ run Brentford are on has almost inevitably sent many of my media colleagues into something of a frenzy.

The excellent local reporters aside, it has been amusing to analyse the match reports penned by the hacks from the big regionals whose sides have been left floundering in the path of the Bees juggernaut.

The same goes for the national boys, who previously would have fought tooth and nail with their sports desks to get any game apart from a visit to TW8.

Now, of course, Brentford are starting to be big news and with that comes all the usual clichés that I try religiously to avoid like the plague.

As interest grows in the fairytale rise up the league for little Brentford, so do the stories linking promising Bees midfielder/striker/defender xxxxxx with a big money move to xxxxxx.

The Sky reporter’s commentary on a recent Andre Gray goal featured the casual, needless and frankly obvious aside that “Bees boss Mark Warburton admitted every player has his price”.

The sports reporter is always looking for the fresh angle so any speculation linking Alex Pritchard away from “unfashionable” Brentford to a bigger club (in the eyes of the media at least) fills a few column inches.

The Western Mail in Cardiff, like many regionals before it, preferred to blame the inadequacies of their team – disastrous and shambles were two of the adjectives – rather than sing the praises of a rapier-like counter attacking Brentford display.

Stan Collymore is another one desperately determined not to give the Bees any credit… but maybe that’s because he needs big listening numbers to boost his ratings. Give it time Stan, give it time.

As I said earlier the likes of Jake and Tom at the Chronicle can’t afford to create stories out of nothing and their coverage is thorough, considered and built on truth.

But the self fulfilling prophesy that the vultures are circling Griffin Park is born out of a sensational first half of the campaign which has featured the best football seen by Bees fans for arguably eight decades.

Clubs are bound to be interested in Warburton’s secret formula, but here’s the bad news for any interested suitors… there isn’t one.

The whole thing is built on 18 plus technically gifted blokes who all understand the system, who all work for each other and who are enjoying what they do for a fair and intelligent boss, without even thinking about it.

Take one of them away and drop them into another team without the same ethos, and they may not have the same effect, because Brentford are more than the sum of their parts.

Simon Moore, a gifted keeper with a bright future ahead of him, has languished on the bench at Cardiff while Adam Forshaw could be playing in League One next term.

George Saville is away from the capital playing his trade in the Black Country probably ruing his choice and Trotta’s game looks to be suffering in sunny Barnsley.

My point is that in 15 years time when this group of young Brentford players quit the game, they will all look back on the here and now as the best time of their career.

They have supporters who travel the length and breadth of the country brought up on a diet of mediocrity, so everything they are achieving right now is a beautiful bonus.

Irrespective of whether the run continues, Bees fans are a pretty realistic bunch capable of seeing the bigger picture – that there is a plan in place here, a plan that relies not just on the team but also on the development off the pitch.

There is no expectation weighing them down like at other clubs and that perhaps is why Bournemouth are also ripping up the form guide.

Brentford, as many sides have discovered, are a different proposition now and there is a unity among the club and its fans who are enjoying the forward thinking progressive nature of everything the football department and its back up teams are doing.

In Matthew Benham we have a chairman who will continue to focus on that bigger picture even if results do dip, and remember the incredible job Warburton has presided over.

He too may be the target of lazy journalism from hacks trying to link him with a move away, but he is far too pragmatic and has seen enough of life outside football to be coaxed away from a project that is still very much in its infancy.

So in keeping with the change of ethos at the club, the vultures may well be circling in January… but this time they may be wearing red and white stripes.

Jim Levack