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Regular Beesotted contributor, Jim Levack, revels in the delicious football that has been served up by Brentford in recent weeks and gets slightly philosophical in the process.

There comes a time in everyone’s life when it’s important to take stock of achievements. Doing so gives us a sense of worth, pride and accomplishment that we have left a legacy, however small, to the world.

My highlights were Middlesex table tennis selection, a string of half decent news scoops down the years and playing football to semi-pro level before a medial ligament injury robbed the football world of a clinical finisher. I was 49 at the time.

The reason for this slightly circuitous philosophy lesson is, as you’d probably guessed, linked to the incredible football currently on show at Griffin Park.

Over the past four or five weeks, for 15 or 20 minute spells here and there, I’ve witnessed something that I’ve never seen before in 40-plus years of watching Brentford.

It’s an almost indefinable joy among the players where they are completely and utterly ‘in the zone’, to the extent that what they are doing is not hard work at all but a joyous celebration of their technical ability, fitness, skill and above all, togetherness as a team.

For 15 or so second half minutes against Rangers – where Brentford never really got into top gear – the free-flowing football was a pleasure to watch and left even the most cynical Bees fans shaking their heads in disbelief. Ditto against Leeds, Derby and Burton away.

I played in a student team where it all came easy and we reached finals galore from the ages of 19 through to 22. And despite playing for several other sides and having mini highlights along the way, I’ve never been able to find the same level of sustained delight at being part of such a brilliant team.

We were great on the pitch and, as a result, the changing room banter was slick, merciless and brilliant. We won together, sometimes lost together and drank together. But we were always together.

That is clearly the same with this current crop of young players and the frightening thing – for the rest of next season’s Championship that is – is that there is more to come. Find a little more consistency, strengthen in a couple of areas and this is a squad destined for greater things.

The point I’m trying to make is probably best illustrated by the departures of decent players like Jake Bidwell and James Tarkowski, both lured away by the promise of a couple of extra noughts on their pay cheque but now either doing a dance with relegation or keeping the bench warm.

It’s a short career and every player has families and mortgages to consider, but equally, when they retire they will have to look at the scales and answer two questions. Did I earn lots of money and did I achieve what I wanted to in the game? 

The current crop will have plenty of time to achieve both, but trust me, the opportunity to play in a flair-filled side like the current Brentford one – where it comes naturally – doesn’t come along that often. If at all. Ask the scores of players grinding out a living playing functional football where results and nothing else matters.

Recently it’s even got to the stage – and I’ve heard colleagues in the press room say the same – that people don’t mind if Brentford lose as long as they put in the kind of performances we’ve seen in recent weeks.

Inevitably, though, the vultures will begin circling the second the last ball of this season is kicked and the temptations will be great, but my advice is simple… sit tight for at least another season and enjoy your football because if work doesn’t feel like work then that’s a gift too good to be wasted for short term gain.

Jim Levack