Brilliant Bees have their chips stolen by Seagulls. But what a game and what a goal!

Is it wrong to walk out of that game feeling totally crushed? If ever there was a rollercoaster ride of footballing emotion then here it was as Brighton left Griffin Park with a point that looked anything but expected for huge periods of this game. That it ended 3-3 was beyond most people’s comprehension with the clock showing 94 minutes played and the score at 2-2.

Anybody who wasn’t here missed one of the games of the season. Anybody who wasn’t here missed one of THE goals of the season as Konstantin Kerschbaumer’s late strike sent tidal waves of delirium cascading over Griffin Park with the Bees retaking a lead they’d held for all but the final 12 minutes of the game. It was a lead we held until all but the final 12 seconds of the game as Brighton broke Brentford hearts to snatch a late, late equaliser.

If you were there then you know what happened. If you weren’t then there’s the BBC, Brentford official, Beesotted etc. You all know the drill by now. We don’t do in-depth match reports here. I’ll leave that to the likes of Billy – Reeves and/or Grant. That said, whether you were or weren’t then do check out the highlights, which Sky TV have already put up on their website.

With barely twenty minute gone, the Bees had raced into a two goal lead. The first a back heel from Jota that was as delicious as a half time cup of Bovril. The second, a powerful header from Harlee Dean.

“Reminiscent of Terry Evans” was the verdict for one terrace wag whilst discussing the opening period on the forecourt over a well deserved cup of the aforementioned meat extract drink. And yes, it was. Yet Big Tel wouldn’t have driven forward so purposefully for so long. With a two man central defence restored, Harlee has looked even bigger and better than before. Even charging forward on breakaway runs whilst leaving Ryan Woods to cover. He’s been magnificent.

The second half could have seen it all wrapped up. Another blitzkrieg raid from Jota saw a penalty earned. Lasse Vibe stepped up, only to see the diving Stockdale in the Brighton goal somehow get a hand to it and send the ball looping over the Ealing Road in a trajectory not seen on a dead ball since Miguel Llera lined up for the Bees.

Jota all of a blur as he shredded Brighton

No matter, this one was still in the bag. Surely? Brentford had been simply magnificent up until this point. Whilst the penalty had, somehow, been saved another goal was only a matter of time. And sure enough, it came. To Brighton.

What? This wasn’t in the script. Moreso, when it was followed three minutes later by another. Shane Duffy (who I could have sworn was part of popular music’s Boyzone) headed home for 2-2.  Noooo. How could this happen? We should be 3-0 up. not pegged back to 2-2. Not on the ropes and reeling as only poor finishing and Daniel Bentley’s point blank save stopped the Seagulls from stealing all three points as though they were a tourist’s chips.

And then, it happened. With 7(seven) minutes on the board, most of those had elapsed when KK picked up a through ball from Alan McCormack just inside the Brighton half.

I repeat: KK picked up a through ball from Alan McCormack. Oh, how these two have been conspicuous by their absence yet coming off the bench they showed Dean Smith just what he had been missing out on all these months.

Like Forrest Gump (except quality entertainment) he ran. And ran. An exchange of passes with Lasse Vibe just outside the Brighton box was met with a crushing drive, low into the bottom corner past the despairing Stockdale.

Yeeeeessssssssss! The net rippled, there was the briefest of silences as we all registered what happened and then Griffin Park exploded. 9000 voices erupting as one in an outpouring of joy I haven’t heard the likes of at home since Jota did that thing against Fulham. In the last minute.

Oh, what a moment. Word cannot describe how that felt. Utter joy. Utter jubilation . Utterly deserved. 3-2 up. Three points in the bag. Even quality journalists such as the BBC, and also Ian Moose from Talksport,  had declared it as a win. All we had to do was run out the clock.

KK is in there, somewhere

Yet Brighton are pushing Newcastle United neck and neck at the top of the Championship table for good reason. With the totally ineffectual Glenn Murray having been replaced, the Seagulls had finally looked like a team worthy of their lofty position. And with virtually the last play of the match, it was their fans who had their own moment of ecstasy. Tomer Hemed being the man to head home an equaliser that, if KK had provided the orgasmic denouement, was the equivalent of then being told “Its not you, its me”.

Brentford had been well and truly dumped.

Yes. I walked out of Griffin Park feeling crushed. But a bit of past match perspective is a wonderful thing. Two weeks ago we were a team who had struggled to put more than 20 minutes of pressure on our opponents. Now we’ve destroyed Aston Villa and, arguably, should have had another three points after making Brighton look like relegation fodder rather than title contenders for huge swathes of this game.

The new look formation and a couple of judicious changes have worked wonders. We’ve scored six goals in two games since the day Scott Hogan was sold to an Aston Villa side who remain behind us in the table. KK’s moment of brilliance is one I’ll never forget. As one Braemar Road observer would later reflect, “I think that Kersch goal is up in my all-time list that I’ve seen live.”

I wouldn’t disagree. Chin up lads, you were magnificent today. Again. Chin up Tom Field and Lasse Vibe. You were both wonderful and totally underserving of the respective tweets that you have been forced to post. Heckling your own players after this one? Feeling guilty about missing a spot kick?

Utter nonsense. I feel blessed to have watched that one today.

Chin up, Brentford. That was incredible.

Nick Bruzon 

The two most beautiful words in footballing parlance are back.

There are just two words to mention today for Brentford fans. You’d be forgiven for thinking these are Leeds and Barnsley. This, after their respective 90th minute goals in the latest round of fixtures denied three points for Fulham and turned a plucky away draw into a glorious defeat for QPR. You could even have Shane Duffy in mind after the Blackburn defender has endured what could be politely called a ’torrid’ a start to the season. But you’d be wrong. For me, it’s all about the most beautiful piece of alliteration in the English language…. Terrace Talk.

Yes, football’s most brilliant feature is back. And this time Sean Ridley is in charge.

To read the rest of this article, season 2016/17 is now available for download on e-book in the retrospective: Welcome Home, King Jota (Brentford FC season review 2016/17)
 
Priced at just £1.99, all sales are being donated to the Brentford FC Community Sports Trust.

Likewise any sales from the previous titles – Celebrating like they’d won the FA Cup (2013/14), Tales from the football village (2014/15) and Ready. Steady. Go Again. (2015/16) – are also now going to the BFCCST.

Containing the least bad of the blogs from May 16 to May 17, you can pick it up, here. Its all for a great cause and,hey, you may even enjoy it…..

The BBC table doesn’t lie (Although will tell a more accurate story after 10 games)

 

Jo – Queen of the TT ‘walk and talk’

Nick Bruzon

We go again, again. Again.

Anybody else bored of this drivel? (😉). Wow. That was frustratingly grim. Fair play to 10 man Blackburn Rovers for taking their chance and winning the game but Brentford are now, officially, in trouble after head(less?) coach Dean Smith was forced to admit we were in a relegation battle. A 1-0 win for the visitors, following a late strike from Shane Duffy, made it 7(seven) losses from 8 for the Bees and sees us down to 18th – just six points off the relegation places.

“This is a relegation scrap, isn’t it?” asked BBC Billy Reeves in a post match interview that you can hear in full here. With Brentford now in to 33/1 to go down from 150/1 last weekend, Dean had no choice but to acknowledge : “It is at the moment, because we can’t seem to find a win even when we’re well on top in games and teams are down to ten men“.

There is now a break of two weeks until we go again and that will be a long time for us all to sweat on where the next points are going to come from. Yet again, we were party to a demonstration that holding on to the ball counts for nothing. Despite seeing 66% possession and having a man advantage for over a third of the game following the dismissal of Grant Hanley for a second bookable offence, Brentford failed to find the back of the net. Again.

Blackburn offered little yet despite plenty of grunt and teasing around the edge of the box, there was a distinct lack of penetration from the Bees. A couple of shots from distance aside, Alan Judge coming closest at the death, we were impotent. We should have taken advantage and, certainly, still had enough class players out there but we failed again. Instead, there were too many individuals playing for themself rather than trying the pass to release a team mate.

View from the Braemar – Alan Judge had our closest effort once more

So is it the managerial/coaching set up or the players? Has the loss of Jota, Tarkowski and Toumani been the straw that broke the camel’s back? Why can’t we look like being even close to troubling a goalkeeper on any more than an occasional basis? Is Dean Smith displaying inspirational skills learned at the Leroy Rosenior school of motivational management? Or is something else going on behind the scenes to upset the vibe?

I wish I knew the answers but something isn’t right. Lee Carsley had the vast majority of these players firing on all cylinders during his brief stint at the helm but yesterday was yet another damp squib. The only positive to be taken out of it was the return to action of Scott Hogan who received a heroes ovation, coming on to the pitch for the final quarter hour.

He’s back !!

John Swift missed proceedings, something that Dean confirmed to Billy was down to the player’s inappropriate use of social media the day before.

Whilst he hadn’t been due to start, the England U-21’s decision to post a somewhat questionable meme saw him axed even from the bench. Featuring what Billy described as, “A picture of a smiling hipster” you can understand why some people might have been upset.

And just to be clear, that’s due to the wording rather than mention of hipsters or just choosing to use a meme – the lowest of all art forms. Then again, I still cringe over Brentford ‘official’s’ Obama dig at Fulham last season. Let’s hope that won’t come back to haunt us.

No excuse for hipsters or memes, regardless of content

Coming in a week that has seen the players stage their own meeting and the reaction to the QPR debacle described as “Phenomenal” (maybe, in retrospect, we need to revisit the dictionary) this was a disciplinary decision Dean could have done without. Swift of all players probably had to prove a few doubters wrong after the QPR no show. Yet despite this midweek positivity in the squad that we’d been told about, the player has put himself in a position where Dean has felt compelled to show who wears the trousers.

Brentford official would later describe the result as Blackburn stealing the points. As one Braemar road debutant would later put it, “How do you steal if it’s a gift?”

It was a tame surrender of an advantageous position and is fast leaving Dean Smith with a worse record than Atomic Kitten’s Greatest Hits.

And I wouldn’t wish that on anybody.

We were robbed. Sure

Nick Bruzon