From the worst to the best in a ‘single’ step…

I opened yesterday’s column talking about Liverpool and Brentford, and it got me thinking.

Not about our epic 88/89 FA Cup run, which culminated in an Anfield quarter-final, featuring that immortal moment of commentary from the late Tony Gubba as (now) Premiership Liverpool were almost given the fright of their lives:

““No Offside!! Cadette!!! Ohhh, he’s missed!! Sinton’s lovely little ball and Richard Cadette, top scorer with seventeen goals this season… how close did he come to putting this quarterfinal? Well, it would have been dreamland for Brentford, wouldn’t it? It was inches wide of the post. And that…silenced the Kop”.

It was more about music. The Bees and the Reds share a collective link, with Brentford’s club song, ‘Hey Jude’, being made famous by the Beatles – the biggest thing to come out of Liverpool until John Barnes became Tranmere manager.

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.

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It is, quite literally, a cup competition.

No sooner has the league campaign begun than we are straight into cup action. As such, today we’ll take a look at the top ten Brentford cup performances of the last 30 years (and there’s also a rather special ‘caption competition’ to close) but firstly, the weekend.

As ever, if you want the minutiae of what happened on pitch then Chris Wickham or Beesotted are your best bets  – and a splendid job they both do, for the record. The Last Word is about ‘the other stuff’. So what did we learn?

Firstly, those of us unfortunate enough not to travel had the small consolation of the BeesPlayer show; the highlight of which was ‘doughnut-gate’. Whilst special guest pundit Stuart Dallas had the will power (or fear or Uwe’s wrath – delete as applicable) to resist the tray of cakes on offer from the Port Vale hospitality team, one member of club staff was unable to display the same discipline. I’ll spare this particular chap’s blushes  – if you were listening you’ll know who – but anchorman Mark Burridge reckoned it was at least three.

As Shakespeare famously wrote, “Our bodies are our gardens to the which our wills are gardeners”. On Saturday, the gardener was definitely not sitting in the press box.

 The top ten Brentford cup performances of the last 30 years.

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.