The Bees host The Eagles at the Gtech this weekend as Thomas Frank’s men will be looking to extend their unbeaten start to the 2023-24 Premier League campaign.
Brentford head into the weekend, sitting fourth in the Premier League table following last week’s annihilation of Fulham in their own backyard.
Next up, a visit from Crystal Palace in a fixture that, in recent times, has offered little. A pair of 0-0 draws in our first top flight season were followed by matching 1-1 scores last campaign. Indeed, but for late goals by Wissa at Selhurst Park (88) and Vitaly (90+6) in the home game it could have been worse.
Certainly, those low scoring games were what could politely be labelled as ‘for the purists’ with Brentford forced to take it to the limit by The Eagles just to salvage a point.
Having seen Palace’s game with Arsenal on Monday night I can only expect more of the same. Roy Hodgson has his team set up to stifle play when on the backfoot and then look to break at pace when going forwards.
Indeed, that Arsenal fixture saw them sitting deep for huge periods with almost half their chances coming in the final five minutes. By contrast, Arsenal were afforded the time to carve out opportunities and could have got in a number of times earlier, especially attacking down the right flank.
Room for Bryan to exploit, perhaps? Likewise Rico Henry and Keven Schade where the wide spaces will be even more crucial than ever in enabling Brentford’s creativity.
For The Bees, the main injury concerns surround Ben Mee and Josh Dasilva. The former is thought to be close to a return although on current form the only way he gets in is as part of a three centre-back formation. Nathan Collins was my star player at Fulham and Ethan Pinnnock has picked up where he left off last season – on fire. Given our own need to flood the midfield and flanks in this one, I’m expecting that even if fit Ben will need to be content with a place on the bench.
As for Josh, nobody likes to see a sub subbed but that’s what happened just ten minutes after he came on at Craven Cottage. Word on the street suggests he may be out for a while and with Matthew Benham posting one of his famous ‘cryptic clues’ online yesterday, could an imminent replacement be ‘en route’?
With these clues notoriously impossible to crack (even when you know the answer) it’s as likely to be Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi as anybody else. Then again, with Romeo Beckham in the B team, perhaps he has had a word with his dad…
All that’s to come, of course. For now all the focus is on Saturday 3pm and Crystal Palace. Traditionally it may not have been the most high scoring of fixtures but with The Bees currently banging them in for fun (five in the first two games) could this be game to change all that?
Bring it on and see you there.
