Danny

Mathias Jensen has signed a three year deal until the 25/26 season with an option to extend to the 26/27 season. Great news for us as his contract was running out. Due to injuries and covid he started slowly last season, but from January onwards he was one of our best players and unsung heroes as Eriksen took all the credit. He is one of the first names on the team sheet now and is the type of player we need to keep if we have intentions of getting into Europe.

The Sky Sports News machine is amping up the Raya to Spurs rumours. I'll be honest I don't expect that we'll keep Raya and going into this season it felt like this would be his last, for me he is easily in the top 3 keepers in the league. I think Allison and Ederson have shown at different times that they have world class, almost unmatched skillsets. Away from them I think Raya is head and shoulders above Martinez, Ramsdale and de Gea. I will be honest and say I've not seen a lot of Brighton's keeper, so can't make an argument on whether or not I think he's better, equal or worse. But still, with Raya's contract situation, his shot-stopping ability, calm in big matches and his distribution I think this Summer would be the perfect time for Spurs, Chelsea or Newcastle to make a move for him.

I can’t lie I came into thread and saw the words “Poor daniel masterbates” and then “Brentford fan has” and had a mini heart attack as I started to question whether I have a pulled it out and gone at it at a game in front of the cameras lol. Fortunately I haven’t. That Everton video is the epitome of football fans isn’t it, bar a minority everyone is all bark and no bite, some gentle hands on his back to let him know that hes not in enemy territory haha

Anyone play career mode? I'm slowly starting a career with Brondby IF in the Danish Superliga, plan is to win multiple Champions League titles with a team full of Danish stars. Difficult to start with as most of their players are in the 60s ratings and they have a transfer budget of £9m, which is about the average cost of the average Danish player playing abroad, let alone top tier talent.

Outside of the stadium has looked rundown and pretty shit for a while now, this is a good upgrade. They just need to sort the the lower gray wall timeline they have that's faded.

A really good look at how we're the third best side in the league at winning games when we take the lead first. Interesting to see we made the most subs last season and so far this season, just goes to show the increase in subs doesn't just benefit bigger teams. https://theathletic.com/4054378/2023/01/11/brentford-close-out-victories-premier-league/?source=emp_shared_article

No idea tbh. Cricket crowds in England seem to be one of the same, friendly piss ups

Not the countryside but London has a great amount of parks. Kew Gardens, Hyde Park (walk round the serpetine), Finsbury Park to Ally Pally walk which starts on a disused rail line turned into country walkway with Highgate woods (and pubs) and a nice view of London on the way. Regents Park and Hamstead Heath are nice (can swim at the heath in the summer), Holland Park is more of a gardens but also nice too.

For Lords youre best off getting a hotel near Kings Cross Station and you can get a train pretty much straight to the ground in less than 5/10 minutes. Plus if you do any sight seeing Kings Cross is also good to get you into all the touristy areas within 5/10 minutes. It used to be a massive shithole with crackheads and prostitutes everywhere and that is definitely still visible at times. But the area is mostly now a gentrified food and shopping district. Just don’t stay in a hostel, over here theyre less backpackers and more halfway houses. Especially in and around Kings Cross.

Invite the inlaws over

What’s the talk of Pep Lijnders having more and more influence on the team? And it being a negative? He’s been at Liverpool for all of their recent successes, why is it now potentially a bad thing?

Great piece on how we bummed Liverpool from corners

I’ve not watched a lot of Chelsea since Potter took over, but having watched the opening exchanges of the Bournemouth game it’s clear to see his game plan. In fact the opening goal pretty much summed it up. Zakaria and Mount are there to provide Jorginho with passing support but mainly they seem to be trying to run into space provided by the front three who are constantly changing position so that there is always a man running at the Bournemouth defence into space. An example of that was Chelsea’s RW dropping in deep with the ball to play it to James and Jorginho at the half way line and as he did that and drew a defender with him Zakaria made a run into the vacated space waiting to pick the ball up in an advanced area. The goal was interesting as before it occurred Mount was on the far left, James tried to run the ball up the wing and pass to Sterling but it wasn’t on so they had to reset back to the centre backs. As they did that Mount drifts back to a RCM position creating an overload in midfield on Chelsea’s right side and that allows Jorginho to pass to Mount who is in space who can then feed Sterling through and let him run at their defence. Havertz hasn’t seemed to have dropped deep centrally much, either he tries to get ahead of the defence to get on the end of a pass/cross centrally or he’s on the right wing position looking to run at the defence creating space for Mount to run into centrally. The players seem to be reacting well to Potter and his system looks to play to their strengths.

Might be Accor stadium or some shit now but yeah, I’ve been to watch a few Rabbitohs games there and taking away the fact that 90% of the ground is empty, the stadium itself is shit and dated. And yeah, travel to the area is terrible. I can see why they put it there because it’s central to west Sydney and central/eastern suburbs, but the main stadium really has to be in the city imo as the best transport links lead to there.

At what point do you look at sacking Lampard? Obviously you’ve had years of mismanagement and he is unfortunate to have to deal with that, but he did get the chance to make a number of signings in the Summer to try and reshape the team. At no point have I seen Everton look like a team isn’t in a relegation scrap under him.

Thomas Frank signs a new deal, again, until 2027. https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11095/12773772/brentford-head-coach-thomas-frank-signs-new-contract-until-2027 I think Frank is one of the best managers in the league outside of the very obvious big three in Pep, Klopp and Conte. We’ve made a statement with this as if I were at Villa, Everton, Leicester etc looking for a manager who could help break you back into the European spaces, I’d be looking at Frank. And I think in a season or two it won’t just be your clubs who are traditionally big but are shit, but will be sides like Spurs also looking at him. He has a very large ceiling to grow into and I think he’ll eventually lead us into Europe which would be great for us and his CV.

If there was anyone who could help bring a happy ending to these strikes…

Not much between them tbh. And is Trent is world class The 5 wingers do make most squads but our issue is theres only 2 positions for them.

I'm bored at work and have been thinking about the England team. The current strengths that seem to be thrown around a lot is that we have a great squad with players capable of winning a competition and that is what is levelled at Southgate, that he is not using them properly. For me when I look at the current England team I can break it down into 3 categories; good players that ultimately aren't that great, top level players and then elite level players. I'll break the starting eleven and subs down into those categories: Good: Pickford, Ramsdale, Rice, Phillips, Mount, Shaw, Maguire, Coady, Trippier, Dier, Gallagher, Wilson, Pope Top Level: Sterling, Rashford, Grealish, Saka, Foden, Maddison, Henderson, Stones. Elite: Kane, Trent, James, Walker, Bellingham. There are two main issues with this squad based on how I rank them. The first is that is our best players are competing for the same positions, we have three world class right backs competing for the same position and then we have 5 top level wingers competing for 2 positions. Yes we have strength in depth there, but ultimately you can only ever play two wingers at once, you can only play one right back at once. Depth is great for injuries or subbing players on to change a game, but it's not great when our second main issue for me is that the rest of the first eleven is actually fairly average by top 10 international team standards. Looking at our starting elevens throughout the tournament, teams that most England fans were actually happy about, players like Pickford, Shaw, Maguire, Rice, Henderson and Mount, these are players imo who would struggle to get consistently picked by Argentina, Brazil, France, Netherlands and Croatia. So the team has this lack of balance where we have a really good strike force available but then a fairly average midfield and defence, and specifically looking at the midfield, we lack players who can dictate possession and thread passes through for forwards to run onto. Henderson is a great player when it comes to energising a midfield, leading players and also making world class players perform even better. But he is not the man who is going to step up and be the difference maker in midfield, and that can't solely be relied on from Bellingham either. Because away from Bellingham we don't really have many creative players. Now I did mention Maddison above, and so hopefully in the future we can see more of him, I think Maddison is the only real option as an attacking midfielder that we have moving forward, but again the options are minimal. When you look at the list of players available for England some fans see a potential world cup winning side, but we are so stacked in positions where we can only play max 3 of the 8 or so players available, the rest struggles to compete at the very highest level. The issue for me is that we do not have a good enough first eleven currently and I don't think sacking Southgate will change that, I'm not completely sold on Southgate but you can argue that he's best placed to work out where we can up the quality around the first team.

I think the nations with big footballing infrastructure, that have big populations and football is the national sport or one of, should have a manager from their own country. There should then be a second tier for nations like Ireland where the football infrastructure is quite weak compared to other sports in the country, or countries like Uruguay and Croatia where theyre actually sick at football but have a small population, or countries like Scotland who are both shit at their national sport and also really tiny. These nations should get to have foreign managers. Personally I want an English manager for England, simply because that is the point of international football.

This is the problem with Southgate hysteria, the alternatives are batshit crazy but banded around because people need anyone but him. Let’s get Robert Di Matteo as well, he also won a Champions League after taking over someone elses job midseason and providing a temporary morale boost.

Fact is there arent really any managers available who would clearly do a better job, and as we’ve found out with Luis Enrique being successful at club level isn’t a guarantee at international level

They don’t just need to knock that stadium down they need to build something over it that isn’t a stadium. Horrific planning, terrible transport links and a terrible effort at trying to replicate Melbourne’s success with the MCG and Etihad being central to the AFL. The local stadium redevelopments are the way forward.

I don’t fully back Southgate but I’m not against him staying on

haha hes a tidy squad player but probably best at Championship level