An afternoon of domination but….

Charlton Athletic 1 Brentford 0. What I want to say after this one isn’t printable at present. Besides, those same thoughts have already been penned this morning for the match day programme ahead of Derby County visiting on Saturday. Albeit less sweary….!

It was more a case of striking when the opportunity presented itself. And since nobody wants duplication – least of all the editor – this is your lot for today. Pick up the magazine should you somehow have any interest in yours truly’s opinion on this result and the broader situation.

Not my words…. etc etc

 

We’ve all seen it now, anyway.  Over two and a half thousand travelling to The Valley by boat, tube and other means. And if not, the EFL highlights are here.

Very much a case of Shoulda Woulda Coulda at the death. Oh well. At least it gives an easy option if anyone is playing #BeeTheDJ at the Derby game.

Catch the action

If anyone fancies being the DJ..

Nick Bruzon

 

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Brentford walking into weekend protest at Blackburn as Charlton crank theirs up

Blackburn Rovers v Brentford. By rights we should be talking about Gary Blissett sending the Bees into a 1989 FA Cup quarter final against Liverpool or Jota sending Mark Burridge into near meltdown as he scored ‘that goal’ (#Burridgegasm). Instead, it seems that this Saturday we could be walking into the heart of a maelstrom with a supporter protest being planned against club owners Venkys. Like Charlton Athletic fans before them (and stick around to see how they took things to the next level at the weekend) it is another protest against an ownership that is deemed to have run a once successful club to the brink of disaster. And then pushed it over the edge.

Any excuse to take a look at this one again

The Lancashire Telegraph is reporting this morning how fans plan to raise red cards on both the 18th and 75th minute – a reference to the club’s formation in 1875 prior to their becoming founder members of the football league – as a sign of their dissatisfaction with team performance and the club’s rising debts.

Will this affect Brentford? Will it play into our hands ? Will we be able to get back to winning / goalscoring ways against a team who have been  rooted in the bottom three for what seems like most of the season ? Or could it even inspire the home side to up their game?

Who knows. What I can say is that it certainly puts our own ‘problems’ in perspective. In Matthew Benham and the current board, we have an outfit making no secret of the fact that the club is looking to be run in a financially sound way. For sure, the glut of sales / departures alongside Mark Warburton were tough for many to swallow but nobody could deny a subsequent Championship finish of 9th was a false or unimpressive position. The table doesn’t lie,

As recently as our last game, the Bees were a win away from hitting the play off zone. Sadly, we capitulated against Fulham with a, frankly, woeful performance that saw the Cottagers finally record a win against us at the fifth attempt.

Our biggest supporter dissatisfaction is currently in regards to the new club crest and, whilst all observations pro/against equally valid, it’s hardly in the Blackburn / Charlton category of doom and gloom.

I love the nod to the past in our new crest

As for Charlton, just when things couldn’t get any crazier at the Valley supporters took matters further into the hands in the ongoing protest against owner Roland Duchatelet. They visited his home town of St Truiden on the weekend of his 70th birthday with the intention of handing out leaflets to outline their concerns.

Not only did they do this but, likewise, stumbled across the man himself enjoying a birthday meal as his team went down 3-0 at Swindon. The Coventry Telegraph is amongst those with the story whilst you can see the video footage below.

For all that Brentford fans may be unhappy about certain aspects of life at Griffin Park, things could be an awful lot worse.

Charlton fans take protest up a notch.

Nick Bruzon  

And you thought football was a village…..we aren’t alone!

In a season where communications, or lack of, have been one of the key themes for Brentford supporters trying to get our heads around the club’s new direction it seems there is a similar sentiment across London at Charlton Athletic. That said, the ‘problems’ faced by the Bees seem miniscule compared to those at the Valley. Yet given how raw last season’s ‘Village-gate’ affair still feels to many, yesterday’s press release from the Addicks has struck a chord in what some might deem a similar scenario. Namely, that of a patronising and nonsense packed ‘official statement’ on a club website.

‘Football is a village’ is a line that will be forever steeped in infamy at Griffin Park. If ever we were looking for an opposite to, “They celebrated like they’d won the FA Cup” then here it was. To this day, I still don’t know who came up with that gumph, who thought it was our best response to the leaked stories surrounding Mark Warburton and why, in retrospect, nobody has come out and suggested we might have played that one a little bit better. Still, enough has been said about that sad event on these pages to warrant further discourse (although if you’d like to read more…..)

Then, yesterday, it all come flooding back as the Charlton media team decided to crank the Village factor up to 11. To be fair, they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Sunday’s home win against Middlesbrough which, hot off the back of a victory at Griffin Park has given them renewed hope of survival, was one marred by a number of protests against Roland Duchatelet and chief executive Katrien Meire.

Amongst other things, a coffin made an appearance whilst several whistles in the crowd did their best to disrupt the players. Kick off was followed by a deluge of beach balls onto the pitch and several fans walked out on 74 minutes – to signify the amount of goals Charlton have shipped so far this term. There was even a somewhat unsavoury pitch invasion which, against type, the watching Sky TV cameras gave full prominence to .

I can sympathise with the club in wanting to do something. Likewise, they’ve even waited on this until Tuesday in order to let the immediate heat go out of the situation and then give it their most considered response. But there are ways of doing something and then ways of doing something. If I didn’t know better I’d suggest our own comms team had been transferred out of Griffin Park and taken up residence at The Valley.

“Last Sunday, some individuals did not come to The Valley to watch the game and support the team, but came to create disorder on the pitch and interfere with the players and the game. Disorder which is, allegedly, needed to drive change in ownership and management”

Those aren’t my words but the opening salvo of a ‘toys out the pram’ response that makes the football village seem almost Shakespearean in comparison.

Other ‘highlights’ include, “Some individuals seem to want the club to fail. This is a confused approach, since following this logic leads to exactly the opposite of what we all want: staying in the Championship” and

“Allegations regarding the CEO are misrepresented and are continuously used as a method to discredit and fuel personal abuse, hatred and with a risk to personal safety”.

You can read the full statement on the Charlton website. It’s a sorry state of affairs for their supporters, many of whom I have no doubt are backing the team to the hilt. Instead, at this time of need, they are all being tarred with a brush of ne’er do wells in a statement that reeks of paranoia.

Football is, without doubt, something bordering on a religion and obsession to many. It is part and parcel of our lives, our friendships are based around it whilst, for many, the choice of club is a generational thing handed down by parents keen to pass on the torch. Simply put, we are bound to our teams in a symbiotic relationship where everything that happens to them impacts us one way or another.

Sure, Charlton had to make some sort of reaction. Yet given the frustrations which have been building over the course of this season and came to a head on Sunday, doing it in such a fashion is yet another example of a club owner’s failure when it comes to making friends and influencing people.

For all those unhappy with certain aspects at Brentford this year, please have some perspective. Whilst we’ve certainly hit a bump in the road on the pitch, off the field Matthew Benham and his team have started to open up more to the fans in the last week whilst you can’t deny he is a Brentford fan through and through.

Football isn’t a village, it’s more than that. Our top brass would do well to continue realising that.

Please let’s not ever release a statement like this (again).

Nick Bruzon

It stinks at Charlton

 

How to make friends and influence people…or not

As Brentford fans wait for the managerial void to be filled (May 30^th being Mark Warburton’s last day in that role) there was plenty going on elsewhere yesterday as Southend United and Charlton Athletic did their best to alienate league rivals and supporters respectively. Meanwhile, the rumour mill was linking Everton and Brentford, again, although this time with a player moving away from Griffin Park.

First up though, social media. I’ve long had a sense of nervous trepidation when clubs use their official ‘twitter’ accounts for (alleged) comedy purposes or ‘getting down with the kidz’. At best it falls flat on it’s face in a cringeworthy mess; at worst it is nothing more than bullying. Very few get it right.

I’ll spare you another lecture on #trophyfriends – our own efforts in this field are legion (whether through the official club account or employees stating their opinions regarding the team). That said, Mark Warburton and (especially) Matthew Benham seem the exception to this rule with the latter providing a number of genuinely amusing moments over the season and his use of cryptic video clues to reveal transfer news.

Matthew Benham – genius and winner of Twitter.

Then Charlton Athletic came along and seemed to buck the ‘official trend’ . Their comment when all at the Goldsands were celebrating a promotion for Bournemouth stopped the football world dead in its tracks and made us all think….what if? This, from the club that had earlier released the security camera footage of a couple ‘scoring’ on the centre spot after breaking into The Valley (not a euphemism) – later revealed to be a stunt to promote pitch hire.

Charlton Athletic – former kings of twitter

Then yesterday it all came crashing down.

Seemingly, the club have taken exception to one of their supporters having the temerity to suggest they invest more on the pitch than off it. Putting aside his grammatical faux pas (‘there’ rather than ‘their’ ranks alongside ‘expresso’ as typos to infuriate) was there any other reason to respond in such cutting fashion? Moreso, via that most heinous of social media weapons – a meme (surely something which should be outlawed by the Geneva convention)?

Putting down their own fans – via meme….

But if this act of humiliating/bullying (delete as applicable) a supporter in front of thousands was bad enough, Southend United went one better (or should that be worse?) in regards to Leyton Orient.

In a time when we are, rightly, being constantly asked to show respect on and off the pitch, they’ve really let things fester after a spat that seems to have started in February. Revenge may be a dish best served cold but this is nothing more than kicking a fellow team in the nuts when they are down. Let’s see if they live to regret this in 12 months time…

Southend United – gracious winners

As for Brentford and Everton, several news sources were suggesting the Goodison Park team are showing an interest in England U-20 star, Moses Odubajo. Hopefully, this is just one of the numerous rumours floating around cyberspace that we will be deluged with as the papers desperately look for something to talk about over the summer months.

Moses has made a fantastic step up from League One to the Championship; moreso, as somebody who started as a winger and had to be shifted to right back after injury to Alan McCormack – a position he went on to occupy for the rest of the season.

Mind you, it shows how well we have done even for it to be suggested that Everton are looking at a player form the Brentford first team, rather than us raiding their youth system as has happened so many times in the last few seasons.

And finally, in the latest updated from the FIFA scandal, Sepp Blatter released another statement saying that he was totally unaware of any wrongdoing and couldn’t possibly be expected to police FIFA. Or, rather, football as he conveniently removed as much reference to his own, allegedly, corrupt organisation as was possible.

In the end it all ended up sounding a little bit ‘Bart Simpson’…

Any excuse to crowbar The Simpsons into this blog.

The amalgamated Last Word season compendium: Tales from the football village (from Saunders territory to unchartered ground), is now available to download onto Kindle (and other electronic reading device) in full.

Running from July 2014 – May 2015 it contains some additional material and is available for less than the cost of a Griffin Park matchday programme. Including all the info on our own social media highs and lows, along with a full review of the season just gone, it’s the e-book that nobody is talking about – but that you might well enjoy.

   

Lots of goals. Lots of points. Lots of tickets.

What a Wednesday! Brentford fans were able to take stock of a stunning 4-1 victory over Huddersfield Town last night before then receiving great news from Fulham with the announcement of ticket allocation for next month’s derby game. We’ll get to Craven Cottage shortly but for those still in need of a recap from last night, Huddersfield were the latest to try their luck at Griffin Park against the free scoring Bees.

7 (seven) in the previous 2 home games (3-1 v Bournemouth and then 4-0 v Blackpool) have now become 11 in 3. A 4-1 victory was the least we deserved as Chris Long took just four minutes to get off the mark on his full Brentford debut.

His second, following fine work from Jota (how often has that phrase been used this season?) restored Brentford’s lead after Harry Bunn had given the Terriers brief hope. But if that goal reinstated Brentford’s supremacy in terms of goals, what was more amazing was how things remained level in terms of players.

Bunn and James Vaughan were both incredibly fortunate to avoid bookings after preening in front of the home supporters like a pair of coked up peacocks. The reaction from the Ealing Road was hardly surprising but justice was soon delivered.

Alex Pritchard made it three before midfield man of the moment, Jon Toral, followed up his hat trick from a week before with a smart strike from distance. Bunn, meanwhile, eventually found his way into the notebook although referee Kavanagh must have been suffering xanthophobia when it came to Vaughan. A number of cynical challenges were shown nothing more than an inconsequential talking to for the Town number 9.

The video highlights are now on YouTube

 

But a victory of magnitude does, in the cold light of day, make such anomalies almost an irrelevance. The key points to remember are another +3 in the GD column, a refreshing alternative up front and, most importantly, three more points as Brentford hit the play off spots once again.

And then the ticket news from Fulham was announced. An initial allocation of 4000 (with the option for a further thousand) means we’ll take up a fifth of the ground for the Bank Holiday game on April 3rd. As ever, full information is available on the club website and you can read that here.

As we saw last season at Leyton Orient, huge travelling support to a local derby can make a monumental difference.

Here’s hoping for a very Good Friday.

A day of strange, strange results keeps the table wide open.

Brentford’s 1-0 defeat at Birmingham City on Saturday was just one of many slip-ups from the teams in the Championship promotion mix. Only Watford could take advantage of defeats for Derby County and Middlesbrough (along with Bournemouth dropping two points at home to Blackburn Rovers) to make any progress up the table. And then there was Clem at Crewe Alexandra…

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 on.

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Clem predicts how many points he’ll earn for Crewe (or is that a crafty ‘pick’?)

Warbs the loan arranger as Birmingham City await

Friday’s build up for Brentford’s trip to Birmingham City (we’ll get to that game shortly) was filled with all manner of news; and not all of it good. I don’t mean over at Charlton Athletic, where the story about a couple caught by security cameras having sex in the centre circle turned out to be nothing more than a cheap publicity stunt to promote pitch hire. The club owned up to this fact yesterday morning and so rather than hitting the (centre) spot, it seems the amorous couple had been faking their orgasms.

Fair play to them. You have to admire a club with a sense of humour and the ability to have a joke –

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 on.

Sam prepares to drive to Wycombe

4 goals, 42 shots, 74% possession. That’s some mathematical model.

Brentford blew aside Blackpool like a crisp packet caught on the breeze as they recorded a second win in as many games. The 4-0 scoreline does little to reflect the one sided nature of a game in which we registered 42 shots to the visitors 2 and had 74% possession. Blackpool, who spent much of the game with ten men following a red card for Charles Dunne, offered nothing and, being honest, could have made the long journey home on the wrong end of a bracketing had we been that bit more clinical.

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 on.

The BBC stats show just how one sided it was

View from the terrace – Jon Toral, team and fans celebrate his third goal

However, I have a picture that suggests that there is an alternative which could keep both parties happy. If Matthew wants a mathematical model then our artist’s impression of how this could be accommodated would, I am sure, be a popular one.

Is this what Matthew means by a mathematical model?

Will it be three more points as Blackpool go West?

Brentford welcome Blackpool to Griffin Park on Tuesday night in what, on paper, seems an excellent chance to continue on our winning way after Saturday’s splendid 3-1 victory over Bournemouth. With the Tangerines already 12 points adrift of Championship safety and manager Lee Clark telling the BBC that he “may struggle to fill the substitutes’ bench” surely this has three points written all over it?

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 on.

Crisis? What crisis?

Normal service was resumed on Saturday at Griffin Park as Brentford’s 3-1 victory over Bournemouth saw the Bees back to winning ways once more. It was almost as though the previous ten days hadn’t happened – the only difference being the absence of sporting director Frank McParland who was tending to his leeks or whatever else it is you do on gardening leave. Brentford were, simply, magnificent.

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 on.

Aswell as 35 yard shots, Brentford also try the ‘lining up for a bus’ dead ball technique

Visiting supporters were in jubilant mood before kick off

For a game given the tongue-in-cheek nickname of ‘The tin pot derby’ by supporters of both clubs (as a reaction to the jealous jibes of our, supposedly, more illustrious divisional rivals), it was one played out with all the passion of the FA Cup final. But there is nothing ‘tinpot’ about either of these sides and the celebrations on full time certainly felt like Brentford had won that famous old trophy.

Jota has his eyes on the tinpot