A good news, bad news, interesting news kind of day as Bees prepare for Fulham.

Well, yesterday was all over the place. With Brentford looking to follow last Friday’s West London derby win over QPR with a repeat against Fulham there was bad news, good news and interesting news coming out of Griffin Park. That final point, one which will have as much intrigue for Cottagers as Bees with the three most exciting words in the English language : Terrace Talk Extra.

First up; the bad news. We all feared the worst when Lewis Macleod collapsed in a heap at Loftus Road last week. An elongated period of treatment that saw the player eventually stretchered away took the shine off an otherwise wonderful evening.

Despite our most optimistic hopes, the realist amongst the Brentford faithful braced themselves for bad news. Sure enough, it has now been delivered. Not only will Lewis miss the game against Fulham but, indeed, the next nine months as he undergoes what has been described as ‘reconstructive knee surgery’.

It’s terrible news for Lewis. The Brentford family all know his well documented struggle with injury yet, this season, it looked like he’d finally got past all of that. A series of strong performances had seen him as one of the star players in Dean Sith’s team yet now the future must seem a bleak one.

That said, he couldn’t hope for a finer support network around him. Brentford have always shown tremendous long term faith in their injured players whilst several of his own team mates have been there, too.

Andreas Bjelland missed almost the entire of last season following a severe knee injury picked up less than 45 minutes into his debut  – ‘that’ cup match against Oxford United. Likewise, in Scott Hogan we have a man a man who has more than been there before coming back bigger and better after an agonising 18 month wait to return from reconstructive surgery after his own, well documented, knee ligament injury.

Indeed, the infrequent ’tweeter’ broke his usual vow of cyber silence yesterday to post this message :

He'll be back stronger and better (if possible) than ever , chin up mate @LewisMacleod_ back in no time!

— Scott Hogan (@ScottHogan92) November 2, 2016

Any further words at this juncture would seem somewhat trite. The Brentford family will all be behind Lewis, wishing him the very best. Here’s hoping he’s back on the anti-gravity treadmill before we know it.

The other tweet to catch my eye yesterday was from Lasse Vibe – the aforementioned interesting news.

It was nothing more complex than the ‘scissors’ emoji followed by a link to instantgram, “whatever that is”, to quote one of Peter Gilham’s finest on pitch announcements from last season. Well, it seems that in this instance Lasse has had a makeover.

Lasse Vibe: Hair today. Gone tomorrow

Gone are the flowing locks to be replaced by super smart new look and accompanying glasses. The reaction around cyberspace seems largely a popular one. Top comments to his post included: “footballer to wizard in one cut!”  , “Looks like you should be in University Challenge!” and the somewhat worrying thought “Please don’t become like Torres after his haircut “.

That said, the new image did have me wondering whom Lasse now resembles. The Boy wizard? Bees fan Simon? El Niño himself? Or somebody else?

Personally, I prefer the ‘or somebody else’ option, simply because it allows us to crank out a montage. Clockwise from top right, could it be: Brett Stark from mid-90s Neighbours (kids, ask  your mums), Magne from A-ha (again, kids ask….) , Brad Pitt or our own video editor par excellence , Sean Ridley?

Who’s got that Vibe?

And talking of Sean Ridley (as seamless a name drop as noted pie fantasist Ian Moose offering birthday wishes to “my good friend….”), Wednesday’s good news saw a bonus: Terrace Talk Extra.

Coming in at close to thirteen minutes of head to head brilliance, it sees  a Fulham fan venturing deep into the heart of enemy territory. Well, The Griffin. There, he has gone one-on-one with one of our own for a light hearted, but very informative, preview of Friday night’s game.

Which Brentford player would Fulham most like to sign? Who is elderly ‘keeper with a generic name, Ted Smith ? How many loving shots of delicious and refreshing Frontier lager could Sean cram in?

You can find the answers to all of these in Terrace Talk Extra: below.

Who comes out on top? Brentford or Fulham?

And finally, an apology for an oversight. Tuesday saw the Last Word rundown of the best ever Brentford moustaches. Yet, it would seem, there has been a major oversight. No Barry Tucker.

Well I’m more than happy to put that right. Better late than never, here’s Barry’s ‘tache…

Nick Bruzon

Who is joining (or leaving) today? Matthew is back !

Fire up the old Brentford. Matthew Benham is back. On Twitter that is. Whilst he has already returned after a brief mid-season hiatus, Wednesday saw him teasing us with another spin of the ‘cryptic clue generator’. On a day in which this column bemoaned the Charlton Athletic school of comms, it made a refreshing change to see Matthew at his fan teasing best .

What does it all mean? Of course his use of a video clip is traditionally associated with somebody new coming in to Griffin Park. That said, his clues are as hard to understand and unravel as Claudia Winkleman doing the maths on Countdown. Even when you know the answer.

https://t.co/gi2p8FoNVm

— matthew benham (@matthew_benham) March 16, 2016

So what can we learn from this? Is somebody coming in today? Certainly, Dean Smith has been very vocal about his desire to dip into the loan market.But any attempt to translate the sequence has , so far, proved as futile as going into a fierce London derby, away from home, with no strikers in your starting XI.

The clip is the Doctor Knee sketch, from Chris Morris’s series Jam. Soundtracked by Brian Eno, it features actors David Cann & Amelia Bullmore ( best known for playing Sonja,the Ukranian girlfriend of TV’s Alan Partridge  – Don’t get Bond wrong !).

But watching the video for a scripted clue or a lead from one of the main names has, as ever, proven pointless. The only Chris Morris I know, in a footballing sense, is now in his 50s and no longer troubling the good people at Panini.

Then it hit me. What if Matthew has changed his modus operandi and is hinting at something else?   Assuming we aren’t signing a player with an injured knee (when would we ever do something like  that?) this could mean one of two other possibilities.

1 – That Scott Hogan is in line for a recall on Saturday following his well documented stint with the Griffin Park medical team. Has that period officially come to an end? Whilst, surely, too soon might we see him make a cameo from the bench? After all, he has been increasing his playing time for the development squad.

2 – That it may be somebody leaving us. The final scene of the sketch see the patient going through the ‘out’ door. If not the case of Scott leaving the doctor’s surgery, perhaps a departure (player or staff; on or off field) is imminent at Brentford? But who? And replaced by……?

Brian Little in for Rasmus or Phil as co-director of football? A rejig in the comms team? Peter Gilham finally hanging up his microphone?

I can’t see any of those happening and, besides, I’m normally as off target as Nick Proschwitz when it comes to unravelling Matthew’s clues.

Instead, we’ll await any update on Brentford official with intrigue. Then fail miserably to backwards translate

Chris Morris is now past the prime of his 1988 heyday – playing wise

  Nick Bruzon

 

 

Slow news day? Surely this can’t be true?

I love an unusual headline – whether it be on the internet or the local press. But the one which appeared about QPR boss Harry Redknapp yesterday (or, should that be, former QPR boss Harry Redknapp) had me performing a double take. And moreso because of the immediate knock on this could have for Brentford and our own manager, Mark Warburton.

Harry Redknapp is no more (at QPR)

I can only wish Harry well although the whole thing does seem to smack of, what we could politely call, unfortunate timing. He waits until immediately after the transfer window has slammed shut, having failed to spend any money (a feat as rare as three points on the road for the Loftus Road mob), before deciding he has to walk away – although I apologise if that’s probably not the best choice of phrase in the circumstance.

And the Brentford spin off? Well, checking the shortlist for his successor, the bookmakers have Warbs at fourth favourite to be leaning out of a car window in the next transfer window.

However, before anybody gets overly concerned, Tim Sherwood is streets ahead at 1/10. ON. Indeed £18,269 of the first £18,763 was on the former Tottenham boss taking over at Loftus Road. Indeed, given the talk at the Brentford fans’ forum I think it safe to say that Warbs isn’t going anywhere for a while.

That said, it is always flattering to be associated with a top flight club and symptomatic of the success our manager (who you may not be aware is a former city trader) has had since taking over from Uwe.

So rather than worrying further about whether Warbs will be heading down the road, we’ll end this article here. Instead, here are a few comedy headlines. Whilst they may not have the same impact as the Redknapp knee, who doesn’t like a bit of ‘cow chaos’ ?

From our first away game of the season

Disturbing news from the world of theatre, via the BBC

The first of two entries from the Argus

Life imitating art

The Argus strikes again

But our winner is…

Excuses, excuses, excuses. And the latest from Clemwatch

Brentford moved up to a giddy eighth place in the Championship following Saturday’s 2-0 win at Rotherham United. This is some achievement – our joint highest league placing in a good 60 years and one that, equally, keeps us 15 places and seven points better off than Fulham. And for the record, stat fans, the Cottagers currently enduring their worst start since 1956-57

Rotherham boss Steve Evans was in typical sour form at full time.

To read the rest of this article, season 2014/15 is now available to download onto Kindle (and other electronic reading device) in full. Containing additional material and even some (poor) editing, you can get it here for less than the cost of a Griffin Park matchday programme or Balti Pie.

 Thanks for reading and all your comments over the course of the season. For now, I need to make more space on the site for any follow up. However, ‘close season’ will continue in full, further along.

It would take a genius to predict this one

It’s almost matchday. Tomorrow, finally, sees Brentford entertain Wolves at Griffin Park in the showdown between League One’s form team and the early season pace-setters. These are very much the top two sides in the division with Wolves’ current residence in the play-off places largely due to Leyton Orient (the anti-Crawley?) playing anything from two to seven games more than all but three of their rivals.

I’m predicting a noisy atmosphere and a full house. That much is obvious, though. Beyond that, I’m loathe to call it. The Bees are, of course, unbeaten in 19 games whilst Wolves have large travelling support and a strong squad. They aren’t within touching distance of the leaders by sheer good luck.

To read the rest of this article, season 2013/14 is now available to download onto Kindle, in full. Containing previously unseen content, you can do so here for less than the cost of one matchday programme.

 Thanks for reading over the course of the campaign. For now I need to make space on this page for any follow up.  The ‘close season’ / World Cup columns continue in full, further on in this site.