With another campaign over, we are now entering that dead zone of pre-Euros/post campaign where there isn’t too much to talk about on the League front beyond rumour, gossip and intrigue. Plus, of course, the question as to whether Leeds United will fall apart (again) or claim the final spot in the top flight after Sunday’s Championship play-off. Yet for Brentford, who finished up in that Topsy-Turvy 6 goal thriller on Sunday (post-match debrief and final POTY details are here) the links with Chelsea, Manchester United and even Spurs continue.
Just about everybody has accepted that Ivan Toney seems set to leave Brentford over the summer. I’d love him to stay but his ambition and the one year left on his contract suggest that the departure of a player who has ripped up trees since arriving at Griffin Park in 2020 is inevitable. The only real question being whether it is Manchester United, Spurs or a team with a realistic chance of making the top four. Put bluntly – we have already signed a replacement in Igor Thiago from Club Brugge whilst Wissa is currently less on fire and more a raging inferno. Of course another look at Ivan in the red and white would be wonderful, but nobody is expecting it.
The question that is probably of more intrigue, at least to outsiders, is that of Thomas Frank. His stock has only continued to rise since taking over as Bees’ head coach from Dean Smith in 2018 and is currently the fourth longest serving manager in English football. Only Mark Robins (Coventry City), Pep Guardiola (Manchester City) and Simon Weaver (Harrogate Town) sit above him. He has guided Brentford to a play-off final victory (in itself, the biggest footballing miracle possible given past form) and has just completed a third season in the Premier League. Now, it would seem, he is on the short list to take over at Chelsea who of course have just parted company with Mauricio Pochettino.
You will no doubt have seen the latest reports suggesting that Chelsea are now looking to replace him with one of Enzo Maresca (Leicester City), Kieran McKenna (Ipswich Town) or Thomas. Supposedly there is a ‘mystery’ fourth name, in Roberto de Zerbi.
Frankly, I don’t really care who Chelsea pick. Good luck to them. Good luck to anybody stepping into what looks to outsiders to be a complete maelstrom of a club. Owners with expectations and input beyond the wit of mortal man. A squad so stacked with big names yet which finds impossible to gel or put in any sort of consistent form. Ten people have had a go in the last ten years (elven if you include the less than spectacular second coming of Frank Lampard). Why think they could tame this beast? Who needs the grief?
Maresca and McKenna both have their own exciting challenges, having just taken their respective clubs into the Premier League. Thomas Frank, whom our focus is on, will be going nowhere. Fact.
The relationship he has with Matthew Benham is second to none. Again, on Sunday, he sung the owner’s praises with genuine, f-bomb littered, passion in his season closing address to supporters.
Thomas, in conjunction with his own back room staff, heads up a coaching team that has built the most incredible team from nowhere. The Bees transfer machine – turning mostly unheard of names in to stars – is the stuff of legend.
The unity with him and the squad is second to none. As is the bond with supporters. Had it not been for the most brutal of injury lists, he and Brentford would no doubt have used the season just gone as the springboard to go even bigger and better. Instead, survival turned into the primary goal with the positive being the emergence of so many players to fill the roles made vacant by all the injuries.
Now, the players are fit. Kevin Schade has returned in style, Rico Henry has been looking sharp in training whilst extensions are already being signed by others. This season’s targets will simply roll over into 2024-25 with Thomas desperate to prove just where he can take his squad and this club. He has been pivotal in taking Brentford on the most incredible journey and will only want to continue this. The speech on Sunday summarising our own hopes and ambitions showed this more than ever.
At one point, these ambitions would have seemed big, new and perhaps nothing more than a joke for a club so often labelled a bus stop in Hounslow. Now, we are in a real transitional phase where the impossible is slowly becoming possible. Every season new heights are reached. New goals hit. Thomas Frank will want to be at the spearhead of all these. Why leave Brentford for the Stamford Bridge horror show?
He won’t, of course. At the end of the day (Clive) I’m sure this is all smoke and mirrors. Talk being drummed up to perhaps obscure the true candidate. There’s more chance of the Frank being Lampard than Thomas although I am sure that ultimately it is de Zerbi who will go for that job.
Thomas Frank is firmly ensconced at the Gtech. There is just too much love, excitement and potential here. Too much of that symbiotic relationship between recruitment, coaches, the B-team set up and the board. If he goes, and at some point it will happen, manager of Denmark is surely the obvious role that may tempt him.
Until then, Chelsea or whomever else can draw up as many shortlists as they want. Thomas Frank is a Bee.
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