By Bulldog Drummond
- Arsenal v Brentford: injuries, tackles, fouls, yellows
- Arsenal v Brentford… Against each other and the all important recent form…
- Do Arsenal really urgently need a striker as the media says?
As for Brentford the BBC tell us, “The Bees could lose five consecutive away league matches for the first time in 11 years.”
In short, they won three of their opening seven Premier League fixtures this season, but their subsequent three victories have spanned 18 games.
So these web sites really are starting to get the hang of this notion that things change as we go through the season. And the most recent run has been pretty grim for Brentford
| Date | Match | Res | Score | Competition |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 Jan 2022 | Southampton v Brentford | L | 4-1 | Premier Lge |
| 16 Jan 2022 | Liverpool v Brentford | L | 3-0 | Premier Lge |
| 19 Jan 2022 | Brentford v Manchester United | L | 1-3 | Premier Lge |
| 22 Jan 2022 | Brentford v Wolverhampton W | L | 1-2 | Premier Lge |
| 5 Feb 2022 | Everton v Brentford | L | 4-1 | FA Cup |
| 9 Feb 2022 | Manchester City v Brentford | L | 2-0 | Premier Lge |
| 12 Feb 2022 | Brentford v Crystal Palace | D | 0-0 | Premier Lge |
That gives them 18 goals against in seven games with four goals scored. Hopefully we will get an early goal tomorrow and then they will have to try and come forward a little more.
Brentford came up through the playoffs last season, and surviving in the Premier League having come up that way is jolly difficult. In fact of the playoff promoted teams there has been a fair number of them that go back down again. In the years from 1995 and 2021 (27 years), 13 of the playoff teams went down immediately the following season…
| Team | P | W | D | L | F | A | GD | Pts | PPG | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14 | Brentford | 25 | 6 | 6 | 13 | 26 | 40 | -14 | 24 | 0.96 |
| 18 | Norwich City | 24 | 4 | 5 | 15 | 14 | 50 | -36 | 17 | 0.71 |
| 19 | Watford | 23 | 4 | 3 | 16 | 23 | 43 | -20 | 15 | 0.65 |
Watford are performing at 1.33 points per game worse this season than last season. Norwich are performing at 1.40 points per game worse this season than last season. And Brentford are performing at 0.93 points per game worse this season than last season.
The situation is such that most clubs that come up from the Championship to the Premier League know that their stay might well turn out to be a short one.
Indeed the number of Championship teams that establish themselves in the Premier League for more than a year or two is very small and is mostly made up of teams that were established in the Premier League before, and simply had a bad season, dropped down and came back. Clubs that are primarily Championship sides rarely establish themselves in the Premier League for more than a couple of seasons.
Thus the Premier League is not exactly a closed shop, but it is a shop that tends to offer short term membership only, to clubs except those that have been established before.
So the name of the game for Brentford is initially survival, and if not, going back down to the Championship in a state that allows them to rebuild.
This we can see particularly through the value of their players. The following data is extracted from Transfermarkt – the value of the players reflects that site’s estimate of their market value.
| No | Player | Age | Contract expires | Market value | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
17
|
|
25 | June 30, 2025 | £28.80m | ||
|
1
|
|
26 | June 30, 2024 | £16.20m | ||
|
20
|
|
23 | June 30, 2026 | £15.30m | ||
|
19
|
|
22 | June 30, 2026 | £14.40m | ||
|
21
|
|
30 | June 30, 2022 | £13.50m | ||
|
3
|
|
24 | June 30, 2023 | £13.50m | ||
|
7
|
|
25 | June 30, 2023 | £12.60m |
This compares with Arsenal’s value listing which includes Saka at £58, Odegaard at £37.8m, Partey at £36m, White at £36m, Smith Rowe at £34.2m , Tierney at £28.8m, Pepe at £27m … and we haven’t even got to Martinelli yet.
These figures are not what players will sell for but the estimation of a market value – clubs often pay well over the market value for players in the belief that the player’s value will increase over time. But the key point here is that both lists are taken from the same source and so use the same basis.
And these figures express neatly why many clubs coming up from the Championship go back down very quickly.
