Inside Brentford’s mad home run with Bees on track to obliterate Chelsea’s record from Double-winning season
THOMAS FRANK is embracing Brentford’s reputation as the Premier League’s kings of home entertainment.
And the Bees boss vowed: “We want to be even MORE attacking at our fortress.”
Gtech Community Stadium fans have seen a whopping 40 GOALS in eight top-flight games so far, ahead of today’s clash with Nottingham Forest.
Spread over a full season, that average of five per game would smash the record of 82 goals set at Chelsea in their Double-winning season of 2009-10.
And if it carries on at the same rate, the Gtech tally could end up close to 100 goals — a thought that lit up Frank’s eyes.
The Dane, 51, said: “That would be quite a story, huh?
“Maybe it’s a little bit linked to us being too open, you never know. But I want us to be as offensive as possible.
“We did it in the Championship. For the two years I was in charge before promotion we were the top scorers.
“When I talk about having a little bit more control in the games, it’s more about whether we can get to a position where we can look to play a ball in behind, or spread it across, or maybe go on the counters.
“But I like to play quite open games. That gives us opportunities, because we have great players that can exploit that space, with way we’ve been building the squad over the last four years.
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“That has given us this opportunity now. The structure, everything in the club, makes us want to go even more offensive.”
Frank points to Mikkel Damsgaard, Kevin Schade and 19-goal dynamic duo up front Bryan Mbeumo and Yoane Wisse as summing up a philosophy he has carried since he was a youngster.
He added: “I’ve always studied the game massively and for many, many years, I’ve been most attracted to more offensive football.
“I always looked a little bit at the Ajax team, the total football idea, and then it was Barcelona, the first Dream Team under Johan Cruyff — which of course also had Michael Laudrup, another Danish player, at the heart of it.
“So I watched all those games, incredible. And then, of course, Pep took them to another level.
“The first for me was Morten Olsen. He was the head coach of Denmark for 15 years and then was in Cologne and Ajax.
“First because he was Danish, in the national team.
“He was a centre-half as a player, although more of a librero, the guy who was driving through the lines himself, very offensively minded.
“As a coach he was the one who first came up with the 4-2-3-1 formation, with very wide wingers.
“He was a little bit ahead of his time in many ways and a big inspiration for me.
“But I was also inspired by watching what Jurgen Klopp did at Liverpool.
“They were the most difficult team to play against from a defensive side because they attacked from all angles.
“Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal as well. I liked some of that, with Bergkamp and Henry, Ljungberg, Pires . . . that was some fantastic football as well.
“I got that inspiration and tried to merge it into my own blueprint.”
Frank is one of the Prem’s great showmen on the sidelines, too, a whirling dervish in the dugout, kicking every ball and seeking to engage the Brentford fans.
Excitement is his demand, although he conceded it might not bring the biggest prizes.
‘We like to be entertaining’
Frank said: “Hopefully, you can be a great entertainer and a great winner at the same time.
“Ultimately it is all about winning, no doubt about that. Winning is the most important thing.
“So we’ve been looking into it quite a bit. Are we too open? Is that why we’re giving too much away? Do we need to adjust a tiny bit?
“I don’t think you can achieve anything massively big without also being quite solid at the back.
“We saw it with Liverpool when they won the championship. They’d been close but they bought Alisson and Van Dijk and ‘boom!’ — suddenly they had one of the best defences in the league.
“City and Arsenal have done things a little bit the same at times and it is extremely important.
“But we like to be entertaining if we can. There’s been quite a few games where we scored and then immediately concede, scored and conceded again.
“Then we’ve been good enough to score the third one and finally be on top and in control of the games.
“I’d like to have a few more matches like the Leicester game, where we’re winning 4-1, that’ll be nice — and then I’d be a little bit more calm on the touchline.
“But we are playing against some good teams.”