What a mess. Where next for team in an 808 state?

What a stinker of a Saturday. Trying to be nice about QPR for a forthcoming programme article. Sergio Aguero, just axed from my fantasy team, almost achieving brackets single handed after five goals for Manchester City at home to Newcastle. England getting dumped out of the rugby World Cup by Australia before the qualifying pools have even finished. And Brentford, the normal hope of some weekly sporting excitement, hit rock bottom with a morale sapping defeat at Derby County.

This assumes Brentford had much morale left to sap after a stint which has been turbulent, even by our standards. Thinking back to last season and Villagegate, I think this has been even worse. At least, then, we had a manager in Mark Warburton that the fans loved and a fit squad of a quality we’d never seen before. Likewise, the team were playing scintillating football. And although the game at Charlton was probably the real low point, performance wise, we came back to reach the play offs.

However, the events of the previous ten days, and I begin with last Thursday, have probably surpassed that in sheer incompetence. I say last Thursday, because that’s when Cliff Crown, Rasmus Ankersen, Phil Giles and Mark Devlin sat in front of the fans to tell us how wonderful everything was. Marinus was there, too. That’ll be Marinus our head coach who, with the supporters out of the way, was subsequently dismissed three days later.

Despite two statements and a probing interview with our director of football (sorry, Phil, but there doesn’t seem to be anything ‘co’ about this relationship – at least, in public) we are still none the wiser as to why he went – beyond a ‘fundamentally different approach to training’. Likewise, why such a positive message had been given just days earlier.

Just what changed on the training ground on Friday?

Apparently it was nothing about results on the pitch – a good thing too, given we’ve lost both games since Lee Carsley has taken over. Lee, don’t forget, a man who has openly said he didn’t ask for the role or particularly want to go into management.

I feel for him, genuinely, and don’t want to paint Lee as any sort of bad guy. Likewise, when even the senior players are apologising on social media after the game then there has to be something intrinsically wrong in the camp.

Harlee and the Judge – not a 70s cop show but comments from our senior players

I don’t envy Lee the task of trying to turn this around. The highlights, such as they are, present a sorry picture of missed tackles and one way traffic. Fairplay to the 808 Brentford fans who made the trip to Derby. I’d love to have been amongst you; part of me is glad I wasn’t – and that’s an awful thing to have to admit.

Instead, I had Beesplayer where it was literally the match and not much else. I.T. problems at the front end meant things didn’t start until about 2.45 and then the commentary team, I’m sure for legitimate reasons, couldn’t get off air quick enough.

There was barely time for Mark Burridge to ask the erudite Mark Chapman for any final words before the plug was pulled. Even Ciaran Brett, who had earlier given us the somewhat eye watering image that, “There’s a lot of Adam Forshaw in Ryan Woods”, didn’t get the chance of a further look in.

It’s a shame, because this is one time when some genuine discussion from the team about what had unfolded would have been very welcome. Instead, it was left to social media for more opinion and, for me, reviewing this Beesotted have hit it squarely on the head.

Fan feeling about the Derby game is summarised in one tweet

Plus points?

1. We have two weeks off. Lee can get some serious one on one time with the squad and see what magic he can work on the players ahead of the home match with Rotherham United.
2. At least we have already beaten Bristol City and Preston – two teams who seem in even worse shape than us.
3. We didn’t concede in the second half. And almost scored.
4. For all we are in a dark place now, the gap to the play offs is only ten points. And that’s not meant as an incentive for promotion but more an indication of how tight the table currently remains.

And this, for me, is the key point in all this. We’re ten games in, the table has taken shape and it doesn’t look pretty. BUT….if we can get our players back and a run together, then there is all the time and the space available to start climbing.

Let’s be honest, this time last year most supporters would have taken finishing ‘fourth bottom’ as a good thing. We ended up coming fifth. Personally, I felt we always had it in us to go all the way and said as much. Right now I’d bite your hand off for that previous aspiration.

Equally, I think we are better than that but in a campaign where rather than gelling as I had hoped we would, the team have only looked worse, you need to start somewhere.

‘Aim for fourth bottom’ is hardly a motivational message up their with the Olympic standard ‘Citius, Altius, Fortius’ . Equally, we need to be realistic, based on current events. Right now I’d love, with a two week break, if Rasmus, Cliff and the rest of the gang could host another fans’ forum.

Some might argue it is too close to the last one but, equally, so much has changed since then and supporter feeling is at a level I’ve never experienced before. That, in itself, is bonkers considering how excited we should be with the Bees back in the Championship and given a chance to consolidate. What harm would it do to face up to the fans for an additional ‘catch up’? At least, then, nobody could complain they haven’t been given the opportunity to speak?

Failing that, why not do an interview with Billy, Dave and the Beesotted camera rather than ‘club official’? As ‘voice of the fans’, they’re never shy and usually have their finger on the pulse.

Beesotted: Billy is never one to hold back (sorry Dave – I’ve no ‘file photo’)

We’ve chosen to go down this route and nobody said it would be easy but right now, with the approach hardly reaping rewards – and these things do take time – then if it is one we are to persist with, survival has to be the primary objective.

And that’s a sad thing to be saying this early into a season that had promised so much following the previous campaign.

Nick Bruzon