10:39am Friday 29th January 2010
By Will Gore
After excellent games against two of League One’s big boys, the Brentford players should be very proud of their efforts.
By all accounts, our performance against Norwich City at Carrow Road on Saturday deserved at least a point and, had it not been for keeper Kelvin Davies, we would have been celebrating a win rather than taking the positives from a creditable draw with Southampton in midweek.
Both of these opponents are clearly on far bigger budgets than us, and it is fantastic to see that Andy Scott is building a squad capable of punching above their financial weight.
And speaking of weight, I cannot let the week go by without a mention of Norwich’s rotund thug (surely ‘prolific striker?’ – Ed) Grant Holt, who was sent off for an horrific two-footed lunge on our new loanee, Toumani Diagouraga (apparently known as Dave to his friends).
Anyone who has seen a replay of the incident can’t fail to conclude that Holt’s early bath was richly deserved – although, apparently, Norwich manager Paul Lambert is the exception.
Lambert, who has the kind of Scottish accent that would make a marriage proposal sound like a violent threat, refused to condemn Holt for the challenge and instead blamed the referee for not giving his team a free-kick seconds earlier.
I expect Norwich to win promotion this year – they are clearly a class side – but it is a shame their gaffer can’t reflect that off the pitch, too.
You may remember that earlier in the season, Southampton boss Alan Pardew irked Brentford fans by showing a similar lack of class after our draw with his side at St Mary’s and, guess what, he was at it again after Tuesday’s game.
Pardew said: “You only have to look at the pitch – it was a war of attrition and that is better suited to Brentford.”
Like last time, he seemed to be suggesting that his cultured, pass-and-move team had been thwarted by a bunch of hoof merchants.
Anyone with even a passing interest in Andy Scott’s Brentford will know that is not the case, and Pardew’s excuse about the pitch does not wash either –only last week, Doncaster Rovers made a mockery of the conditions by knocking the ball around with comfort.
A legend in his own lunchtime, Pardew clearly thinks he is a Premier League boss temporarily slumming it in the lower reaches, and his belief that he has a team who love to play free-flowing champagne football is, on the evidence of our games against them, complete nonsense.
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