Poor day at Brentford in the absence of a drumroll

With their convincing victory over the Clarets yesterday, Brentford achieved their first home victory of the season. In the end, it may have been fortunate for the team to only lose by three goals.

This was our worst away league loss since we lost 4-0 at Spurs in February 2021. For the majority of the match, we played a terrible game, and there were no complaints about the outcome.

On a day when almost nothing went right, we let up three goals, had one against us oddly disallowed, had a player sent off, and missed a clear opportunity. To top it all off, it rained heavily as we left the field, making it a dousing for those who were walking farther than me.

When I left my house yesterday morning, I exuded serene confidence. Considering that Brentford isn’t among the best teams in the Premier League and has only managed one victory thus far, I reasoned that now would be a good time to play them.

This excursion could not have started any earlier. Once again, it was picked up by the Supporters’ Club coach shortly after 7:30 a.m. A brief spell of slow-moving traffic occurred on the A4 just prior to our arrival, after there had been a slight hold-up on the M60 near Stockport, a location you want to get through as soon as possible. Other than that, it went smoothly and we arrived in plenty of time. The location has changed much since our last visit, with more and more buildings rising to further obfuscate it.

I never imagined that I would go on a field trip and hear someone talk about drumming. If I said before that I was having trouble finding anyone who agreed with what I consider to be an utterly absurd viewpoint, I should have said that I found no one at all who disagreed. The email that was issued to SOME season ticket holders was also met with harsh criticism from many, and I frequently heard the terms “condescending” and “offensive” used to characterize it. That being said, I was unable to locate any one who reported to Charlie Watts, Phil Collins, or Ginger Baker.

Will the club go with it in spite of the criticism? Honestly, I wouldn’t be shocked if they did, but if any of our directors happened to be at Brentford yesterday, they undoubtedly heard what ended up being the day’s loudest chant:

WE’RE BURNLEY FC – WE DON’T NEED A DRUM

Returning to the field, Vincent Kompany made three changes to the squad that Chelsea had defeated two weeks prior. Vitinho was replaced at right back by Connor Roberts. Though Josh Brownhill’s removal to make room for Zeki Amdouni to return was likely the biggest surprise, Dara O’Shea was favored over Hannes Delcroix in the center of defense. The fact that Ameen Al-Dakhil could stay on the team was wonderful news. Delcroix and Brownhill were on the substitution bench, but Vitinho was not included, and Aaron Ramsey—who had also been substituted in that Chelsea match—was not included.

Two highly identifiable players were warming up for Brentford. Ben Mee was back in their squad following an injury, but he had to make do with a spot on the bench where he spent the entire game. Nathan Collins was one of them.
As is customary at Brentford, the teams saluted Hey Jude before kickoff, and I must say that the minute of silence for the victims of the Israel-Gaza conflict was perfectly observed. The players then took a knee, which, I must say, was not without backlash from the visiting supporters inside the stadium.

We may have trailed early in the game because of our poor start. Seated in the right-back corner at the end of the field, where we were defending in the first half, I am happy to say that I had already witnessed the assistant referee’s flag go up for offside prior to Neal Maupay finding the net after Collins had headed the ball to him. Josh Smith, the referee, gave an offside signal, but the VAR had to wait. Was this one one we got away with? I may have a hazy understanding of the offside law, but I fail to see why that goal was prohibited.

We appeared to gain from it, and for a brief period of time, I did think we were starting to look more likely, but Burnley is an expert at shooting themselves in the foot, and we did it once more to give Brentford the advantage. Bryan Mbeumo broke on the right after Sander Berge gave away the ball carelessly. James Trafford and O’Shea were unable to stop his cross, which allowed Yoane Wissa to finish at the far post.

Although we thought it was awful, things got worse two minutes later when Al-Dakhil again lost his head and gave Brentford a great opportunity to score. Although it appeared that a 2-0 score was necessary, Maupay’s shot fell just short. Charlie Taylor was able to claw it out just before it crossed the line, allowing Trafford to get a touch and slow it down.

We managed to hold the score at 1-0, but Trafford had to make some incredible saves in the last few minutes of the half to maintain that advantage.

He made some outstanding saves and then we almost snatched an equaliser when a Mike Trésor ball across saw Amdouni bring a good save from Mark Flekken, the only save he was asked to make all afternoon.

There was no doubt that the second half had to be better. We would undoubtedly resolve the issue by halftime. Luca Koleosho replaced the useless Wilson Odobert, but after his first half performance, I was shocked to see Trésor back in the game.

We had a decent start to the second half. When Koleosho tackled the Brentford player down our left wing at the start of the half, he was awarded a free kick. I felt compelled to propose that he had accomplished more in the last two minutes than the two wide starts had during the whole half.

After a little while, our spell ended, and I was ahead in the match when Bryan Mbeumo scored a fantastic shot just after the hour mark. After making a few fast adjustments, we pushed not one, but two self-destruct buttons in the space of a few minutes.

Brentford won a throw in down their right wing with about 15 minutes left. You would have thought that with a two goal advantage, they would have been more cautious, but aside from the goalie, their most advanced player was less than ten yards outside our penalty box, which gave us the opportunity to break once we cleared the ball. One of the replacements, Brownhill, came on and delivered a wonderful pass across for Lyle Foster on the left side. I had assumed he would enter the game and shoot, but after a few erroneous touches, he played the ball over to Koleosho.

The wide-open net in front of him was there. Koleosho only needed to use his right foot to drop the ball into the vacant net. Remarkably, he attempted to accomplish something—I’m not sure what—with his left foot. It was hardly a shot at all, and it went well beyond the goal.

Even though we hadn’t played well, this would have put us up 2-1 and put us up against, I imagine, a very uneasy Brentford squad. After two minutes, Wissa managed to avoid Roberts, who dragged him back. He was given a second yellow card, and our team was down to ten players.

We were then subjected to VAR attempting to determine if Roberts had denied a chance to score a goal after he had already left the field. To be quite honest, if it had been the other way around, I wouldn’t have expected anything less. No, Stuart Attwell said on VAR. Would it have changed anything? Roberts would still have received a one-match suspension on that particular day, but his earlier yellow card for bringing a ball into the field to impede play would still have been counted toward the totting up procedure if it had been altered to a straight red.

Kompany swiftly substituted Jacob Bruun Larsen, who had been on for around fourteen minutes, for Delcroix even though he was two down. That was presumably an attempt to end the game at just 2-0, but Saman Ghoddos scored another fantastic goal to spoil the plans. It was his first goal for Brentford since he scored in their 3-1 loss at the Turf two years ago this coming week.

We had to suffer seven more minutes until we were taken out of this world. After last week’s drumgate, this performance had been surprisingly bad.

It was sad to see and hear the booing aimed at the players from some Burnley fans as they came over at the end. Some of those players looked shellshocked although they will know that the performance just wasn’t anywhere near good enough.

It wasn’t far to travel in the rain on the coach, and the majority of the trip home was spent talking about the game. I ventured to speculate that this was possibly our worst-ever Premier League performance, overreacting as fans sometimes do after a thrilling victory or heartbreaking loss, but the general consensus was that we shouldn’t ignore the terrible 4-0 loss at West Brom in 2014.

Since neither Sheffield United nor Bournemouth, our opponents the next week, have won yet, we are still third from the bottom. We are going to have severe problems this season unless things improve dramatically.

The teams were;

Brentford: Mark Flekken, Kristoffer Ajer (Mads Roerslev 76), Nathan Collins, Ethan Pinnock, Vitaly Janelt, Frank Onyeka (Saman Ghoddos 84), Christian Nørgaard, Mathias Jensen (Yehor Yarmolyuk 76), Bryan Mbeumo, Neal Maupay (Michael Olakigbe 88), Yoane Wissa. Subs not used: Thomas Strakosha, Mathias Jorgensen, Ben Mee, Ji-soo Kim, Ethan Brierley.

Yellow Cards: Kristoffer Ajer, Frank Onyeka, Mathias Jensen, Vitaly Janelt, Saman Ghoddos.

Burnley: James Trafford, Connor Roberts, Ameen Al-Dakhi, Dara O’Shea, Charlie Taylor, Josh Cullen, Sander Berge (Josh Brownhill 66), Mike Trésor (Jacob Bruun Larsen 66, Hannes Delcroix 80), Zeki Amdouni (Nathan Redmond 76), Wilson Odobert (Luca Koleosho ht), Lyle Foster. Subs not used: Arijanet Muric, Jack Cork, Anass Zaroury, Jay Rodriguez.

Yellow Cards: Sander Berge, Connor Roberts, Josh Cullen.

Red Card: Connor Roberts.

Referee: Josh Smith (Lincolnshire).

Attendance: 17,029.