A 5-1 win, shirt news and who had an unusual pet?

Brentford continued preparation for life in the Championship with a 5-1 win over Barnet on Tuesday night. The score speaks for itself although hopefully the missed penalty (and I blame myself for bigging up Mr. Reliable less than a week ago) will get less mention than that other one, which certain areas of the media (i.e. all of them) saw fit to mention a few times (i.e. every week) last season.

The club site has the full match report for those that didn’t catch it live or on Beesplayer. You can find it here. However, for me there were a few other things to catch the eye yesterday.

Being a shirt geek, I was pleased to see that the trend of the club releasing quality kits this season has continued with the latest in the retro range. Mark Devlin released pictures to twitter yesterday of retail manager Maz holding up what appears to be a variant on the 1974-75 top. Black cuffs, long sleeves and the castle badge are all present in what will make the battle for my ‘shirt budget’ this year an even harder fought one than before.

Coming soon to a club shop near you

I really am a fan of the castle badge – it was the one on the shirt when I first started watching the Bees – and so was always sad when it was replaced in the mid 90’s by the current effort. The turreted shield made no real sense to me as to how it tied into the club but, regardless, it has always been synonymous with Brentford.

That said, it will still be going some to beat the latest efforts from Spanish outfit, Deportivo Lugo. With Espanyol no longer visiting next week, I’d have paid good money to see Lugo named as our new opponents – sporting either their Octopus shirt or lager…top.

I like the castle but I love the octopus

The other thing to catch my eye was the search for a picture of Kenny Sansom in Brentford colours. He’d received a mention in yesterday’s article about new signings but I’d been unable to finds such an image on the interweb.

Thankfully, Ray Biggar has since come to the rescue (and that’s a line I never though I’d use about the chronologically challenged referee). Not only did the Notts County 1993 matchday programme (from ‘that game’) have a centre spread on the former England international but it also had a number of personal facts about the man himself.

If the media team are reading (you never know) then what chance the ‘player’s pets’ feature reappearing this season? Although I’d be impressed if any of the current team can better Kenny’s.

Kenny Sansom – as seen in the programme

And if you can’t wait for the big the new season, why not catch up on the last one? ‘Celebrating like they’d won the FA Cup…..’ (The story of Brentford’s 2013/14 promotion campaign, amongst other football related chatter) – is now available as a digital book. Featuring the best of the not so bad columns from last season, and some new content, you can download it here for your kindle / digital device.

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More England & Phil fallout as Messi does his thing

With less domestic stories than the North Korean ‘news at ten’, it’s a good thing we’ve got the World Cup to keep us going. Sunday was dominated by fallout from the England game, Lionel Messi ‘doing his thing’ and Honduras being, what we’ll politely call, ‘cynical in the challenge’.

Everybody has an opinion about the England team, with Wayne Rooney’s positional sense being the main talking point. Given the various tabloid scandals to have dogged him in recent years, the last thing I want to be visualising over my cornflakes is Wayne Rooney’s best position.

The other fallout from the England game was further discussion about the robotic stylings of Phil Neville in the BBC commentary booth. I said my piece on this yesterday but note his own subsequent admission that this was the first game he had ever covered.

It’s one way to unite the country, I suppose, with the criticism of the former Manchester United man being universal. I realise that new talent has to start somewhere, but not in the biggest England game since the last biggest England game. Surely this is what the likes of Iran- Nigeria are for?

I hope it works out for Phil. Genuinely. It’s a poor state of affairs when the BBC can produce somebody who makes Andy Townsend seem vaguely relevant.

The Phil Neville panini sticker – a limited run???

Back on the pitch, Sunday highlights included Lionel Messi with a wunder-goal for Argentina in their 2-1 win against Bosnia & Herzegovina. I’ll be honest; I only saw this on the Internet today. Another 11pm match was too much for me on a school night. If you saw it live, then well done. Well worth staying up for and you can catch it here, c/o the BBC.

France beat Honduras with the first legitimate use of goal-line technology. My gut reaction was ‘goal’ after Karim Benzema’s effort went in via Honduran goalkeeper Noel Valladares. Whilst TV seemed to confirm this, not everybody was convinced. Radio 5’s Pat Nevin wasn’t alone in refusing to believe his own eyes and the video.

Pat Nevin – sticking to his guns on the BBC website

For me, I still say ‘goal’ but the French can count themselves luckier to have escaped largely unscathed. Honduras did their very best to take football back to the dark ages in a performance than reminded me of Zaire ’74 or Cameroon against Argentina (foul wise) in Italia ’90.

Hopefully FIFA will ‘have a word’.

Today’s highlight is the Germany – Portugal clash at 5pm. I can’t wait. Pack your brollies – it’s going to be raining goals.