Sixth defeat in seven games gives Brentford unfamiliar sinking feeling

Brentford seemed so secure so recently. After two successful campaigns, they seemed to have established themselves as a well-run, upwardly mobile Premier League force for whom a European slot was a more practical than quixotic notion.

Third time around, it hasn’t been quite so straightforward and last night’s chaotic defeat to clinical Wolverhampton Wanderers was their sixth in seven games and the relegation berths are hoving into view.

“It’s one of those games you have every year,” sighed Thomas Frank, the Brentford manager. “Two big mistake for goals, plus two we don’t normally give away. But we’ll get out of this minor run of bad form. We’re a good team, a good squad and we have character in abundance.”

Even after a 10-day break enabled by Manchester City’s Club World Cup jaunt, Brentford remain waylaid by absences beyond their control (injuries to Rico Henry, Bryan Mbeumo, Aaron Hickey, Kevin Schade, Kristoffer Ayer, Josh Dasilva), but, also self-inflicted wounds such as Ivan Toney’s betting escapades and suspensions for Frank Onyeka and Ben Mee.

Yet, for all their personnel issues, Brentford were the architects of their own downfall,: wretched in defence, where it is hard to imagine that Nathan Collins will have had a more disastrous 90 minutes; he was at direct fault for two goals, complicit in a third and missed a first-half sitter.

“I’ve told Nathan it’ll never be worse than this,” mused Frank. “He’ll never forget this and while he’ll be down tonight, tomorrow the sun will rise and I expect him to walk into the training ground, head held high. If he sits in a corner feeling sorry for himself, he’ll be lost.”

As it always does, Brentford’s industrious midfield created chances, but without Toney and Mbeumo, they were shorn of a  cutting edge. With Toney far from certain to return at all as the bigger clubs circle and the January transfer window looms, these are the most ominous times of Frank’s hitherto glittering reign.

Two under-strength defences made for a remarkably open contest, where errors would flow and goals would follow. Wolves piled the pressure on the bewildered Mads Roerslev and Brentford almost scored early on, albeit for Wolves when Vitaly Janelt sliced Hwang Hee-Chan’s cross over his own bar.

Famine would soon become feast with three goals in three crazy minutes. Brentford struggled to clear a corner before Pablo Sarabia crossed deep. Mario Lemina was left alone to plant a simple header past Mark Flekken.

If the defending there was feeble, it was calamitous moments later when Wolves scored again, 12 seconds after Brentford restarted. Seeking composure by rolling the ball around, without a Wolves player touching it, former Wanderer Collins’s backpass was woefully short, Hwang nipped on, rounded Flekken and passed the ball into the empty net.

Brentford’s better days always involve resolve and they were not short of it. Back they came moments later. Christian Norgaard headed forwards, Neal Maupay imperiously flicked on and Yoane Wissa volleyed home with rather more aplomb than might have been expected from a striker with one league goal since August.

The madness had still to abate. Having hauled themselves back into contention, Brentford took a wrecking ball to themselves once more. Flekken kicked out, Collins’s hack forwards was intercepted by a firm header from Toti which found Hwang, who spun around Ethan Pinnock and guided home number three.

Others might have been home and hosed, but Wolves’s own defending was rickety and Collins’s miserable evening continued when, unmarked, he headed Ghoddos’s free kick over from almost under the bar and seconds before half-time, Maupay, also unmarked, missed an open goal after fine Sterling Wissa work. And just to add further spice to the second period Hwang failed to see out the first, limping off after seemingly damaging his back after an innocuous Pinnock challenge.

Brentford’s Yehor Yarmoliuk failed to make it either, withdrawn at the break  in favour of Mikkel Damsgaard. Deployed just behind the front three, the Dane added craft and the re-shaped team began on the front foot and stayed there. Jose Sa saved terrifically when the increasingly dangerous Keane Lewis-Potter’s shot took a wicked deflection off Joao Gomes, but for all Wissa’s often excellent approach play, they lacked a goalscoring edge and Sa was rarely a man in grave peril.

With more new blood of their own, Wolves steadied themselves, but even after Nelson Semedo was replaced by fellow right-back Matt Doherty, Lewis-Potter continued to be the source of Brentford’s danger. Yet, tellingly, when Wolves did venture forwards they came close in one attack than Brentford had in a hatful, when Matheus Cunha outpace a lumbering defence and shot against the post.

Alas, there was worse to come and worse in particular for Collins, whose disastrous sideways pass on the edge of his area went only to Cunha, who squared for the onrushing Jean-Ricer Bellegarde to slot home and complete a soul-sappingly sobering evening for unhappy Brentford and a giddily thrilling one for Wolves.