It's another of those pesky London derbies QPR struggle with so badly on Saturday, and ahead of the visit of Brentford we spoke to Billy Grant from Beesotted about the visitors' campaign.
Assess Brentford's season for us, bit of an odd one…
BG: Brentford’s season started badly … got worse … got better … then worse ..and then petered out in January. We’ve had everything that could go wrong in a season and we’re officially unofficially in pre-season now.
First of all there was the appointment Marinus Dijkhuizen from Holland. Lovely guy but a big mistake.
Then we had the pitch that needed to be re-laid - but only after our record signing Andreas Bjelland injured his knee playing on it on his debut and the game against Birmingham was postponed because it was too dangerous to play on.
Then we had an injury list as long as your arm at the beginning of the season. I think we had around 15 players injured - many of them long-term. That meant we started the season having to blood players who were earmarked as ‘second string’. That worked last season in our favour with Andre Gray who was initially ‘second string’ and a bench player at the start of the season. But an early injury to Scott Hogan meant he ended up being a surprise starter for us from September onwards. The rest is history. This season we have had no such luck. The players who have come in are still work in progress. Many of them haven’t quite really made the position their own.
Then we had the caretaker manager who told the world in his first press conference that he actually didn’t really want the job.
The we had the new caretaker manager resigning from the club due to the imminent appointment of the new manager.
Then we had the caretaker manager who had resigned then being employed to become the caretaker manager for one match only for the new manager who had not quite signed the paperwork.
Then we had the player who went on strike because he wanted to be transferred.
Christ. We’ve had it all this season. And we still have two months to go.
Still - as long as we don’t go down, we will be happy. I would have bitten your hand off to be in this position 18 months ago when we were fighting to get into the Championship from League One.
What went wrong with the plan, and coach, put in place over the summer?
BG: Beesotted published an exclusive interview with Brentford owner Matthew Benham on Thursday. Matt rarely does interviews with anyone so it was a real coup to get him to chat to us and give us the lowdown on where the club is going and why things didn’t quite go to plan this season.
He quite simply puts it down to Brentford tying to make too many changes too soon: new manager, new players unfamiliar to the English leagues, players being sold because we couldn’t hold onto them because someone was offering them three times the wages… It was all too much.
To be fair, he was openly honest. He admitted we have gone backwards in 12 months and they made a big mistake hiring Dijkhuizen from the Dutch Eredivise as they didn’t realise the gulf in culture was going to be so huge. His coaching methods and tactics just did not suit the club and he was sacked after just eight games - very un-Brentford.
But they realised very quickly it just wasn’t going to happen and acted promptly to remedy the situation.
Personally I think they actually were thinking much too hard about the appointment. It was like they were trying to be too clever. The club never really recovered from making a bad start.
We had a mini-revival under Lee Carsley but he didn’t want the job. So Dean Smith took over and after a great start - we absolutely wiped the floor with Franchise FC and Huddersfield — but results since have been sketchy to say the least.
However, speaking to Benham, he’s disappointed yes but not overly concerned. Making a fortune from fusing technology with gambling - he created an algorithm which analyses not only everybody but everything in sport and as a result predicts results for the high-end gamblers who he works with - he is used to picking himself up and going for the next gamble.
And Brentford are already planning for next season with a load of players lined up for the summer and other plans afoot to make sure that we start the season full guns blazing.
The fans have been a bit down the last few months but this interview has been a revelation. First of all, the fact that the owner has puts his hands up to say that the club has made mistakes. The club feels that they are learning from their mistakes and have altered their strategy accordingly. Most encouraging was him professing that he is still as enthusiastic as he ever was to make Brentford a success.
What did you make of the Dean Smith appointment at the time, and how has he done so far?
BG: I have to be honest - we steered well clear of Dean Smith when he arrived. We had a great relationship with Uwe Rosler and Mark Warburton when they were at the club - we still speak to Mark - and when Dijkhuizen came to Brentford, we took him down the pub on his first day to get to know him.
Two months later he was sacked and we feel partially responsible. So when Dean Smith was announced, we made a decision not to meet him and let him just get on with it just in case anything went horribly wrong again.
We are looking from the sidelines. He hasn’t had the best starts to his reign. But then he’s walked into a bit of a whirlwind. Players leaving (Toumani Diagouraga and the striking James Tarkowski left a month after he took over the reigns). Injuries. And he’s got a very young squad with the ‘experienced quality’ ripped out of it. Plus he has had to deal with whatever politics there was to deal with too in and around the training ground.
He hasn’t had the chance to bring in his own players as yet but Benham has told us they are working together with Dean to bring in new signings in the summer so that can only be a good thing. He built up a great side at Walsall who were playing good football: Sawyers, Evans (now at Reading), Bradshaw, Henry… All top players. Ironically, we played Walsall in the FA Cup Third Round and his old team played his new team off the park beating us 1-0.
We have got a lot of money in the bank - £9m for Andre Gray, £3m for Odubajo, £6m for Tarkowski, £1.5m for Dallas. And we’ve spent very little. So next summer is going to be a big summer for Brentford to get us back on track.
So all in all, his school report card would read "could do better” but in the comment section, teacher would write "But he is a new kid on the block and is still coming to terms with his new school”.
We will reserve our verdict until after summer when he has had a chance to really get his feet under the table and stamp his mark on the team.
What has he changed?
BG: At the moment, he is tinkering quite a bit. He is not sure what his best side is. We think that is because he doesn’t quite have the players to play the way he wants to play. And also because he has quite a few injures. So we have a situation where our second and third string players are getting game time.
This may sound like a bad thing. But it is actually good for Brentford, assuming we don’t go down this season (very unlikely), as these players are gaining valuable game-time which will make our bench ever stronger when we get our full squad fit.
>Presumably, despite problems this season, the board and chairman retain universal support?
BG: As I said, the owner Matthew Benham is 100% supportive. He’s a Brentford from fan back in the day and used to bunk off school to go and watch the Bees. He’s an incredibly intelligent chap who has made his fortune basically analyzing the fuck out of football.
He feels that the only way we can compete with clubs with deeper pockets is to become more visionary and do things that the other clubs can’t do. So he has used his algorhythm to identify (and I say identify … as that is important) left-field players that teams would not normally pick up on and then, if the scouts feel that they would work for Brentford, sign them.
It worked for us in discovering players like Andre Gray, Odubajo, Jota last season. As we were newly promoted from League One, people laughed at us when we said we were going to play a striker in the Championship who had been successful in The Conference the previous season. They said it would never work as he had no Championship experience and we were immediately written off as relegation candidates.
Overall we were seen as a success last season and we now have the problem that in every player we go for, other clubs are on our tail trying to get a look in.
But the positive thing is the club is not giving up. Benham really likes Dean Smith and gives him his 100% backing. And he looks forward to building a team for the future with him over the summer.
Star performers and weak links in the current team?
BG: Keeper David Button and attacking midfielder Alan Judge are the two most consistent performers. Other than last weekend’s fluff against Charlton, Button has been tremendous. Check this save he made against Preston in January.
Weak links … its not rocket science that we leak goals. You just have to look at the league table. Whether that’s down to bad defending. Or the fact that we play such free flowing football and leave ourselves exposed I can’t really tell you.
But we are a team in flux. So one week we can play brilliantly - like against Wolves we destroyed them winning 3-0 and not giving them a peep in the game for 90 minutes - and another week we can be poop - like against Charlton where were looked like we had no clue for most of the match against a relegation side.
Hopefully you will see the "WolvesBrentford” turn up at Loftus Road on Saturday.
What needs to happen this summer for next season to be better, or are Brentford simply waiting for the new stadium before they're able to push on further?
BG: We’ve got plans for summer. Benham is prepared to spend money. Just not silly money. But what we have lined up for the summer is exciting. Whether it will be enough to push us over the line, I can’t answer that.
But what I’m hoping it will do is bring back the excitement of last season where we were playing great football and having fun going to matches. And even if we lost last season, we were happy because we went down with a fight playing quality football.
The new stadium is a good two or three seasons away. Maybe even more. If we are focused and structured, we could go against the odds and get Premier League status in a few seasons time. But if not, it will have to wait until the new stadium is built.
I have to be honest - most Brentford fans are just happy seeing us play decent football and have a laugh going to matches. That has been somewhat missing this season but hopefully it will come back next season.
We can’t control what happens after that. Que sera sera … but as long as we’re enjoying it ..who cares?
As is often the case with these interviews — and thanks to Billy for being about the best we've had this season — LFW were asked to reciprocate, and you can read our piece for Beesotted here.
You can hear this week’s Beesotted QPR pre-match podcast here or on the embed below.
The Twitter @billythebee99 @Beesotted @loftforwords
Pictures — Action Images