If you hold your breath, you can almost hang on until the season proper kicks off. Brentford have beaten Norwich City midweek. We host Bournemouth on Saturday afternoon as the final bit of prep ahead of ‘the big kick off’ ™ against Birmingham City. The squad numbers have been released and we’re good to go. All that is needed is for the accursed transfer window to shut and all will be good with the footballing world. Talk of West Bromwich Albion or Aston Villa nothing more than a passing reminder about the butt-clenching way in which business is now conducted.
What can we say at this juncture? Word on the street (and by which I mean Beesotted, so a ‘legitimate’ source in my eyes rather than the usual clickbait nonsense) suggests Romaine Sawyers is bound for The Hawthorns today.
We don’t normally do rumours on these pages but Dave, Billy (Grant, not Reeves) and the gang are normally bang on the money when it comes to their information. £3million subject to medical is the fee in the air. With the centre of the park having been strengthened by Nørgaard, Jensen, McEachran leaving and Josh Dasilva getting stronger each game, one can see why this may well play out. Don’t forget, Kamo has been dominant there too. And with Romaine having a year left on the contract perhaps we have no real choice but to cash in on the silky-skilled midfield-maestro. (c) The Middlesex Chronicle big book of 80s alliteration (see also: Beleaguered Bees Boss).
Romaine brings the ball out of the back
Whether it is a case of ‘done-deal’ of 2+2=5, remains to be seen, of course. The Beesotted boys are always a reliable mine of information so I’m only bracing myself for this one. Besides, it wouldn’t be pre-season if the previous campaign’s captain didn’t move on! And if it does transpire then it’ll be a case of trusting the DOFS, saying a huge ‘thank you’ to Romaine and moving on up.
On the plus side, it does detract from all the talk about Neal and Said moving on. For now. With both players conspicuous by their absence over the pre-season games – even the 3-1 defeat of Norwich City – one can only curse those niggly injuries that have kept them out. Presumably that’s all it is.
No doubt the visit of Bournemouth tomorrow will see Thomas Frank trying out as much of his ‘first choice’ starting XI for Birmingham as is possible? Assuming he even has one. And that’s no disrespect to either him or the players but with the diversity of talent available, we are more and more approaching a position of choice in many berths. Whether it would be the supporter choice, of course, is another thing altogether.
Neal and Said are without doubt amongst the first names on any and every Brentford fan team sheet. The flair and raw talent that both players have is undeniable. Their popularity unrivalled. Nobody can deny what they bring to the team and nobody wants to see them leave. If talk about Romaine is tempered by the fact that we’ve had the pleasure of seeing him grow over the last few seasons, to lose either or both of this pair after the impact made last season will be truly gutting.
No matter how much faith and trust I have in the upper echelons of the club, I can’t pretend it won’t be demoralising should either depart. Equally though, the ecstasy about somehow hanging on to beat the transfer window will be something else. 5pm on Thursday August 8th, that’s still almost two weeks, is when we have to hang on in there until. Nothing to it….
Next up, squad numbers. These have been now published although there are some noticeable gaps. Mainly at number 10 (unless that one has moved sideways and become 11). A shame that Marcus Forss wasn’t given this. Our goalscoring Force 10 from Navarone (as one Braemar Road observer noted) will have to wait for another day. Sadly.
I would also have accepted: Fox Force 5 but Ethan Pinnock has been given that honour. And with David Raya understandably bequeathed Daniel ‘David’ Bentley’s old number (sorry, Billy 😉 )(Grant), the cinematic trinity of bad puns has been missed as there can be no Air Force One.
Instead, we’ll just have to content ourselves with rushing out to get our number 19 shirts printed. Unless, of course, that news is confirmed. In which case it’ll be 9 or 21 for me. I’m trusting here. I’m convinced both will feature against Birmingham City next week. The transfer gods can do one!
Does this tell us anything…..?
Next up, and finally, this is the last time I’m mentioning this. It’s been a summer of me annoying you and you indulging me. The Last Word season review e-book (The Jaffa cake Shirt) has been limping off the cyber-shelves to ‘entertain’ – your definition may vary – dozens of you via the medium of kindle, i-Pod telephone or other electronic reading device. However, with all proceeds received from the £1.99 sale price going to the Brentford FC Community Sports Trust I can only thank everybody who taken the time to download this already.
I make no apologies for the fact that I’m still spotting typos in it. That some of the jokes are almost as weak as The Huddersfield ‘shirt launch’. That much of it has been seen before. Equally though, it does have new material in all the ‘Park Life’ programme columns (which have never been published on these pages) and, if nothing else, is simply a way to relive some of the exciting moments from last campaign as we wait for Harlee Dean and his Birmingham City team-mates to visit next weekend. Ahh, ten times better.
Best of all though, it’s all for charity. I don’t like to overly bang on about ‘good deeds’ – that’s not my thing. But the chance to help the BFCCST, more than anything else, is why I keep on at you about getting hold of this. No more. You can now relax. I’ll be sending the BFCCST a postal order on Monday morning.
Just please go grab it now. You can download it here. Who knows, you may even enjoy it….
Nick Bruzon
BrentfordFC 
Presumably Sawyers rejected a new contract or Brentford did not offer him one. Either of those scenarios guaranteed that he would be leaving over summer and so replacements would have been lined up some time ago – the Brentford way of doing things.
It would presumably make sense for Brentford to refuse to deal on Maupay and Benrahma unless a disaster awaits and then sales can take place in the January window at a higher fee if promotion is not an option.
Automatic promotion spot is looking good.
Agreed all round
As the clock ticks down to the shutting of the transfer window I think we will all be a bit nervous. If it’s true, I will be sorry to see RS go as I think he was our stand out player last year after proving quite a few doubters wrong. The DofF must have a decent replacement lined up otherwise they would not be letting him go at this late stage of pre season. I guess the vultures will still be circling up to the last minute. It does prove that Brentford have got it right in terms of player recruitment and I really hope that we now retain all our players to make a real go of it this season and not just plan to survive in the Championship. It also proves that all the so called big clubs (Villa, WBA, Brighton etc) are what I would call lazy recruiters who don’t develop their own players but are prepared to try and rip off the smaller clubs like Brentford with low bids for their best players etc Very, very annoying!
Whilst i know the Brentford Way is to sell their players rather than let them go, i do feel in Romaine’s case keeping him till the end of this new season and seeing where we are may have been a more sensible approach here (IMHO). He offers something fairly unique and whilst he scored no goals and his “key pass” stats weren’t great on paper, we all know how much he contributed last season. If you look at the squad now, it does look very strong, however we now have a significant number of new first team players that will be in the squad/starting eleven, and these guys will take time to gel, and its not easy replacing your playmaker and captain, who is the player that binds them all together. And then, how much do Neal and Said want to go? Will they be disgruntled employees if the do stay or the consummate professionals we hope they are?
Don’t worry, I’m not being negative Nick, just a little cautious. I’m disappointed by the RS sale and thats tempered some of my delight at who we’ve brought in so far
I think this is good business.. It seems he was off to Dean Smith at AV until they got themselves promoted. So Premieship quality ? I’m not so sure.
He is a decent footballer who played his part in the ‘BRENTFORD STORY’.
Onwards and upwards please !