Brentford have featured in the last two weeks and a 2-2 draw with Chelsea ( to score twice) and 2-2 defeat at Arsenal (both teams to score) worked out better for us than the mighty, mighty Bees. They conceded late in both games, with the two goals costing them three points.

 

Ahead of last week's game I noted ............Brentford are coming off a strong showing against Chelsea at the weekend when their own numbers were pretty special ........1.4 XGF, 100 attempts, 4 on target, 13 tackles , 9 blocks and those all in the second half. Last season the Bees had the best (37%) shots on target ratio in the EPL and are back up to 33% after last week and are going to be dangerous offensively in the remaining weeks of the campaign. They have Toney, Wissa and Maupay available and scoring and the club got a HUGE boost this week with the return to full training of Bryan Mbeumo and he should be back in the matchday squad by the end of the month. 

 

They remain down to the bare bones, without ten players last week, six of whom would have started and they then lost key defensive midfielder Christian Norgaard after just 30 minutes, having to replace him with an offensive midfielder, but still managed to keep the top scorers in the EPL largely at bay and all credit to them for that. You can only work with what is at hand and cut your cloth and game plan accordingly and the Bees were also denied by two big second half  saves from Aaron Ramsdale. The winner was scored by Kai Havertz who should have already been dismissed after a clear dive in the box which followed a first half yellow card, but all of the above was forgotten/ignored and the Bees largely castigated from home fans for "negative" play which is mind boggling to me, however biased I might be! 

 

But I digress, Bees might well be forced by available personnel to stick with a 3-5-2 when they would "always" switch to 4-3-3 in such a game, but offensively they are "ok", will welcome the lesser opposition and Burnley will be forced to gamble at times and defensively are very suspect and in their 10 EPL games since Boxing Day have conceded 2-3-1-3-2-3-5-3-2-2 goals. The Clarets are 1-2-11 at home conceding at the rate of 2.43 per game and the call has to be ..........

 

 

 

Good luck!