There’s nothing but good news coming out of the club

With the dust barely settled on Tuesday’s win over Bolton, it was news central at Brentford yesterday.

The media team were in over drive with two major announcements made through ‘official’ on the club website whilst kitman Bob Oteng has already started teasing fans with news of his latest,and final, shirt giveaway. All we needed was an ‘And Finally…‘ story about a pregnant panda to really go ‘full Newsround’.

Did anybody ever ring that phone ?

First up though, Lionel Road. The club have announced that the Compulsory Purchase Order has been approved by the government, allowing them to complete the acquisition of the land required for the new Community Stadium at Lionel Road. In a short piece on the club website, Chairman Cliff Crown confirmed that, “This approval marks the start of further important legal steps that the Club and the London Borough of Hounslow now need to follow. We look forward to being able to make further progress over the coming months.”

This is fantastic news after, outwardly at least, the project seemed to have hit a bit of a brick wall. I have no doubt the team were tearing up trees to get over this latest hurdle and I’m just really pleased for all involved that we are now another step further along the line.

Given the brief and factual nature of the announcement it does pose a number of follow on questions.

Namely – when can we start building? How much did it cost? Can there be any further appeal against the government’s decision? Will we get to see photos of Mark Devlin, Cliff Crown and Matthew Benham wearing ‘hard hats’ and leaning on shovels as the club ‘break ground’?

Hopefully we’ll be given a more in depth analysis of next steps in due course. There are plenty of questions and I can’t imagine that clearing the site or building will start tomorrow. So, for now, let’s just enjoy the good news whilst looking forward to further updates and the prospect of our new home being that bit closer.

Lionel Road is a step closer

And in a wonderful piece of timing, the club have also announced that season tickets for the next campaign will go on sale this Friday. Given it could be our final campaign at Griffin Park (at least, in the current ‘terraced’ form) there was further good news in that, amongst myriad other pricing/membership related benefits, ST prices have been frozen.

The full details are available on the club website in what is, this time, a voluminous statement. CEO Mark Devlin explains the methodology behind keeping prices at the same level, the dialogue with BIAS to help achieve this and the long term aspirations of the club around our fanbase. This really is a positive and forward looking plan that represent great value for another season of Championship football.

But if that wasn’t enough ‘feel good factor’ coming out of the club, kitman Bob has started his own strip tease campaign.

Followers of Bob on twitter will be well versed in his regular kit ‘giveaway’ competitions that have involved all sorts of ‘money can’t buy’ prizes from the back of his locker. Signed boots, signed shirts and even the black third shirt have all been won by fans for nothing simpler (ha!) than than predicting the name and minute of Brentford’s first goal scorer.

I get the impression that the next, and final, competition of the season could be something unique. Bob has already started dropping hints on social media….

Is Bob ending the season with the big one?

I can’t even imagine what Bob has up his sleeve but if the incredible prizes given away so far are anything to go by, this one could be very special indeed.

Stay tuned…

Nick Bruzon

 

 

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An open letter to Matthew Benham…and Banksy

Could the ‘post-Uwe’ Brentford revolution be starting already?

Since the announcement was made about Herr Rösler joining Wigan, club owner Matthew Benham has been on prolific ‘social media’ form.

Firstly, with the return of a ‘cryptic clue’ that, as before, had me flummoxed. A ‘YouTube’ video link to ‘Coutances – Soundtrack (The Science of Sleep)’, performed by Dick Annegarn has left me no wiser as to what Matthew is trying to imply. Quite how this ties in to Mark Warburton (assuming it is him named as our manager this morning) I have no idea. However, this was merely the tip of the Benham inspired twitter frenzy.

Not surprisingly, given the current stories about Sam Sodje and DJ Campbell being involved in alleged betting offences, Matthew has had more than a few things to say on the subject. As the owner of smartodds.co.uk he, if anyone, should have an opinion on this subject and his comments make very interesting reading. There can’t be many Brentford supporters on twitter who don’t follow him but just incase, you can find these on @matthew_benham.

So far so good but what really piqued my curiosity were his comments in regards to the music at home games. The catalyst for this being the request from @tinpotgamer, asking, “Also, please don’t have two home ends. It’s on a par with goal music and giant flags.”

The response was almost immediate and as direct as you could hope “there will never, ever, ever be goal music”.

This was, pun alert, ‘music to my ears’. I love watching the Bees and there can be very little, Keith Stroud aside, to ruin my enjoyment. That said – win, lose or draw the one thing to consistently upset me is our tired selection of full time ‘exit music’. I’ve ranted about ‘Guaglione’ and ‘Celebrate’ before – tired dirges that are on a par with Robbie Williams and his ‘Let me entertain you’ for the songs most likely to be heard in a football stadium (see also: Queen: We are the champions – although never after a Brentford play off campaign).

So, with Matthew on a rich vein of public interaction, this was the time to put the point directly to the man at the top. “On that note, could we also retire the awful ‘Guaglione/Celebrate’ as our ‘sad/happy’ post game walk out music?”, I asked.

The resulting reply was a joy to behold. A positive. To quote: “yep, music needs a shake up for sure, before the game, when players walk out, ht, ft, only ‘hey jude’ sacrosanct”

Could we have heard the last of (not so) Kool and the gang? Has Guaglione parped its last moribund farewell? One can only hope. Come Oldham on Saturday I’ll be paying extra attention to the Ealing Road P.A. – and not just, for once, because it is largely unintelligible.

The other discussion I had on Monday night was one regarding the roof on the Bill Axbey stand. Talking in the pub to fellow supporter Colin Campbell we came up with a couple of suggestions as to what could be done with the ‘Fly Qatar Airlines’ advert that still, presumably now rent free, occupies Europe’s largest advertising board. If they won’t stump up the cash to extend the lease (and, to be fair, why would they) then rather than repaint the entire roof, why not just add our own ‘DON’T’ (possibly at a jaunty angle) at the front end of their slogan? Given the amount of airline traffic that passes overhead, it might get somebody’s attention.

Alternatively, I lay down a challenge to the street artist, Banksy. Whilst, normally, there is nothing big or clever about graffiti, I’d happily see if he could sneak in under cover of darkness to decorate this space in his own unique style. It’s a win-win scenario. He gets the chance to decorate the largest ‘canvas’ possible; we inherit a piece of art, possibly worth more than Griffin Park itself.

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.