The Brentford Gazette
Market28 Apr 2031
Abdoul Ouattara hands in a written request
“I have nothing bad to say about this place. I just need to be somewhere else.” It is in writing now, which changes what Brentford can pretend not to have heard.
Loan watch28 Apr 2031
Nobody is scoring past Julian Eyestone at Middlesbrough
24 shut-outs in 43 games. A goalkeeper’s loan is judged on the afternoons when nothing happened at all, and Julian Eyestone has been having a lot of them.
Player ratings28 Apr 2031
Kristoffer Ajer, 33, rolls back the years — 8.11
There is an age at which every good afternoon gets described as a throwback, which is unfair and also accurate. 8.11 at 33, and nobody on the pitch was better.
Market28 Apr 2031
Alex Palmer has one foot out of the door
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Brentford they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad28 Apr 2031
A falling-out at Brentford
Bremer and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad28 Apr 2031
Words at Brentford training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Maduka Okoye is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Squad28 Apr 2031
Brentford count the cost of losing David Shaw
32 days, the scan says, and scans are kinder than reality. The fixtures in that window have just become somebody else’s job.
The dugout28 Apr 2031
The form table has caught Ivor Pandur
Somebody else has been better, the manager has said so with a team sheet, and there is no argument to be had. He will get the shirt back the only way it can be got back.
The dugout28 Apr 2031
The manager makes an example of Jid Okeke
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
In brief
- The dugout Ellis Simms has become a man the manager trusts
- Match Kristoffer Ajer rescues a point for Brentford
- The dugout Gabriel Ribeiro on the point