Game week 8 sees Brentford visit Manchester United for a Saturday afternoon game where all the pressure, and then some, is on the home team. Nick Bruzon previews.
There has been nothing but the most intense speculation surrounding not if, but when, Red Devils’ manager Erik ten Hag’s time in the hot seat will come to an end. It looked touch and go last season with results this time around hardly a glowing endorsement.
The injury-hit team haven’t won in the league since beating Southampton in mid-September whilst have continued to look abject in a European campaign that has seen just two points earned so far. It’s no surprise how quickly The FA locked in Thomas Tuchel this week, following former Brentford manager Lee Carsley’s somewhat surprising post-match comments about his own role in charge of England.
Last season’s win for the Old Trafford outfit in the corresponding fixture now nothing more than a distant memory of better times for the United fans. The Bees leading for most of the way through Mathias Jensen before Scott McTominay’s goals at the death turned a fine win into the most gut-wrenching of defeats. Goals so deep into time added on that those United fans leaving early would have been half-way back to London by the time the net rippled.
Instead, they can sit in their crumbling theatre of dreams (so called because you’d fall asleep waiting for any form of consistency). Wallowing in former glories and fantasising in self-entitlement about trophies they have a ‘right’ to win because, you know, they were once any good. Sir Alex Ferguson, the news of whose pensioning off by the board sure to upset the faithful even more, presiding over it all like some grizzly spectre of Christmas past. A footballing Jim Bowen, reminding the current fans to ‘Look at what you could have won’.
McTominay is now at Napoli whilst the more pertinent question remains who is actually fit for the home team? Harry Maguire and Kobbie Mainoo are the latest names added to an ever-lengthening casualty list which also includes Mason Mount and Luke Shaw, amongst others. Manuel Ugarte had to leave the field during the midweek internationals whilst Noussair Mazraoui is only just back in training. Who knows how precautionary Garnacho and Diallo’s absence from the latest overseas fixtures actually was?
Brentford, on the other hand, sit clear of the weekend’s opponents and have been making waves in world football with those electric starts. Four successive games have seen The Bees score the opening goal with less than 90 seconds on the clock. Lightning rarely strikes twice, so asking for a fifth is probably pushing the plots so far that even the writers of the much-missed Sky One classic Dream Team would consider it too outlandish a possibility.
Then again, we did it at Manchester City. And Spurs. So you never know. Thomas Frank used Thursday’s press conference to say that “Wissa is training on the grass with the team which is positive. I need to find out if he is ready for Saturday or if it is too soon.” The absence of Christian Nørgaard and our man-of-the-moment Mikkel Damsgaard from international duty nothing more than tactical. Thomas confirming that both are fit to face United, explaining, “Both of them had minor issues….We could’ve pushed them through the international games but then problems might’ve come down the line”.
For Mathias Jensen and Rico Henry it is too soon although the former could be well back in contention by the time Ipswich visit the Gtech – assuming he can break in to the starting XI.
Whoever starts for The Bees, this one is all about having fun. About enjoying a free hit and the chance for not only exacting payback on last season but, likewise, the potential to take a first win on the road. To inflict further pain on a team with all the psychological fortitude of Shaggy from Scooby Doo when confronted by a caretaker wearing a quite obvious joke shop Halloween costume.
If United were to win, it would see them overtake Brentford and climb in to the top half of the Premier League table. For The Bees, the game represents a chance to get back to the top six should three points be the order of the day.
However, I’d very much relish us scoring the game’s opener at the last minute rather than the first.
Then again, it’s Brentford, innit? Anything can happen. See you there to find out what that may be.
