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Brentford going full throttle as Thomas Frank sacrifices rotation to keep automatic promotion bid alive
Brentford just will not go away in the automatic promotion race, having made it a relentless six wins on the bounce thanks to last Tuesday night's late comeback win over Charlton.
For the third time in eight days Thomas Frank’s side took advantage of playing before their automatic promotion rivals to close the gap on second-placed West Brom to just two points and pile the pressure back onto Slaven Bilic’s men.
That seemed unlikely 15 minutes from time at Griffin Park, with Macauley Bonne’s early goal looking set to condemn the Bees to the defeat which would have seen them slip below Fulham into fourth, but Said Benrahma’s penalty and Ethan Pinnock’s header snatched a win that felt far more significant than last week’s waltzes past Reading and Wigan.
Frank stopped short of accepting the Bees’ automatic hopes would have been over had they not produced such a gutsy fightback but admitted his men “know we need to win the next game every single time we go on the pitch”.
With just four left to play after this midweek, even that may not be enough, and looking at the contenders’ remaining fixtures you feel that West Brom dropping points against Derby tonight is not far short of a necessity if the Bees are to avoid simply running out of games to hunt them down.
Frank took a leaf out of Jurgen Klopp’s book in joking that he’d only be watching that game because the in-form Rams are Brentford’s next opponents, but urged his side to “focus on what we can affect”. He added: “We’ll focus on winning on Saturday and then it’s up to West Brom and Leeds to answer.”
If neither falter soon, then Frank will face an increasingly tricky dilemma, as the balance between wanting to continue asking questions of the top two and needing to refresh ahead of the playoffs shifts.
The Dane’s understandable desire to keep foot on throttle during this winning run was evident in his team selection last night, when a home fixture against a relegation-threatened side might have looked an obvious chance to rest players ahead of what is, on paper, their hardest game of the run-in, away at Pride Park on Saturday.
Instead, he went with ten of his strongest XI, seven of whom – David Raya, Pontus Jansson, Rico Henry, Christian Norgaard, Ollie Watkins, Benrahma and Pinnock – have now started all five games since the restart.
Of the other three, Bryan Mbeumo would surely have been ever-present had his return not been delayed by a positive coronavirus test, while Mathias Jensen’s absences were enforced by an injury picked up in the warm-up before the West Brom game, when he had been named in the starting line-up.
Frank’s one deliberate attempt to rest a nailed-on starter before last night was on Saturday against Wigan, when he left Josh Dasilva, the key driving force in his midfield, on the bench, only to have to send him on before half-time when Shandon Baptiste went off injured.
The only one of the Dane’s recognised first XI not included from the outset against Charlton was right-back Henrik Dalsgaard. His worth was proven when Mads Roerslev was roasted too easily in the build-up to the Addicks’ goal – the first the Bees had conceded since February – and then again when he came off the bench to supply the cross that led to the equalising penalty, his understudy having offered little attacking threat against the excellent Naby Sarr and willing Alfie Doughty.
After they first started together in the 7-0 demolition of Luton in late-November, Frank’s idea of his preferred line-up gradually emerged, and by mid-January it was more or less clear, even if his captain Jansson’s injury problems before lockdown meant he has hardly ever actually been able to select it.
Others have made important individual contributions towards the remarkable run since the restart, most notably Emiliano Marcondes, whose goal-and-assist cameo off the bench against Fulham set the whole thing in motion in the first place, but with everyone now fit, there is little doubt as to which eleven names Frank would have on his teamsheet if he was choosing his play-off semi-final side tomorrow.
You sense that while the automatic dream is still alive, however, concerns about getting them there in one piece will be put to one side.
