Brentford away on a Saturday afternoon expedition.
We’re back to the routine mundanity of the league, and with it a trip to the glamour of west London. Brentford are now in their fourth Premier League season and they’ve never looked like getting relegated. Well done them.
After so long it’s getting difficult to say anything new about a trip to Brentford. There’s the players we’ve bought from them (a couple should be playing and a couple never should have in the first place) and the manager we took from them. Then there’s their old ground, with a pub on each corner and their new one, which has all the charm and style of a pile of breezeblocks held together with Meccano. The away end’s a bit shite as well, so it’s just as well there won’t be many of us in there.
Their owner is the poorest in the Premier League (these things are relative) and their manager looks like he was in a nineties boy band who had two hits with Bee Gees covers and now plies his trade at revival festivals, going on between Sonia and Haircut 100. They’ve got a crop of players who are unknown now but are bound to be sold for tens of millions by this time next year. They’ve also got the most reprehensible character in football, and that includes Karren Brady, in their squad.
We’ve got most of our squad back, which probably means an outbreak of consumption on the team coach going to the ground. Their home form’s about as good as we are away so it comes down to who’s got the best team (us), the best manager (us) and the best tactics (us). A win will see us charging back up the league again and set fair for the next stage of our European domination. No problem.
