The Nightmare Was Real

There are some blogs that never get written because of just how boring the game was, so reliving it to write about it makes the resultant blog mind-numbingly dull. Then there are those that don’t make it due to 60-70 hour work weeks leaving me too exhausted to write. This blog almost didn’t make it for a completely unique reason, reliving this game is unbearably painful.

On Saturday 16th March 2024 Brentford took the long journey north to Burnley in high spirits, blissfully unaware of the nightmare from the deepest pits of hell that awaited them in that quaint Lancashire town.

As I made my far shorter trip from Cottonopolis to the Clarets Den I was feeling similarly joyful in the sure and certain hope of a simple and glorious victory over a team that had managed a paltry 14points from their 28 games thus far this season.

Sure the Bees form outside London had been abysmal all season, but we had recently broken the hoodoo in the Miracle of Wolverhampton (https://the-football-tourist.com/2024/02/20/witnessing-a-miracle/) and anyway this lot were so poor that we would just turn up and blow them away like we did in a 3-0 walkover victory at the Gtech in October right? They had

I had conveniently forgotten the game at Bramall Lane when a 11th placed Brentford lost 1-0 to the bottom dwelling Blades in one of the bluntest attacking performances of the season (https://the-football-tourist.com/2023/12/22/brentfords-travel-sickness/).

The only notes of caution for the Bees were their brilliance at throwing leads (and points away) and the sheer number of players still on our treatment table. For this match that included 4 of our first choice defence, as Ben Mee joins the hospital at Jersey Road having sustained a knee injury at the London Stadium.

For the first 8 minutes it looked like my hopes of a simple victory would be realised, but then the nightmare began.

Vitinho broke into the box and was found one-on-one with the keeper before Sergio Regulion caught up with him as the Burnley striker lost his balance whilst shaping to take the shot.

From my vantage point behind the goal the contact appeared minimal at best and the rest of the home side’s appeals were half-hearted at best, the majority choosing to just play on, but then VAR got involved….

After a full 3 minutes of deliberation at the screen, during which time even the home fans began chanting “Fuck VAR” the ref pointed to the penalty spot and compounding this disgusting injustice by showing Regulion a red card. To say I was incandescent with rage would be to downplay the viscerality of my reaction.

Such incidents are commonly referred to as ‘soft’ but that nonsense makes the other soft calls look as hard as marble. That Jacob Bruun Larsen smashed it under the dive of Mark Flekken, who went the right way and got tantalisingly close to ensuring justice was done, to give the hosts the lead was the icing on top of the worst cake in history.

Despite this gift from the man in black it was telling of the difference in quality between the teams that it was the visiting 10 men carrying by far the greater attacking threat.

We could even have drawn level in the 22nd minute if their keeper, Arijanet Muric, hadn’t been on hand to hook the ball off the line to prevent an own goal from a dreadful attempt at a back pass.

Such was the lack of threat from Burnley that even when Flekken fluffed a clearance straight to the feet of David Datro Fofana 20 yards out, with Flekken stuck in no man’s land, it was the keeper who came out on top in the resulting duel for the ball. All Fofana had to do was knock it past him and stroke it home, but he couldn’t even manage that.

Having survived that scare in the dying minutes of the first half and having had the better of the first 15 minutes of the second half it was especially painful to see the hosts double their lead just after the hour mark.

Fofana making up for his earlier failures, including missing a tap into an open goal from 4 yards out when completely unmarked by finishing off a flowing Burnley break, after the Bees had come inches away from equalising. His finish across a stranded Flekken was the hardest of his chances so far.

Burnley doubling their buffer over the Bees was even harder to take as it came minutes after seeing another patient for the Jersey Road hospital trudge off the pitch, as Mads Roerslev booked his bed for the international break.

Thomas Frank used this opportunity to make a triple substitution in hopes of turning things around, it took till the last 10 minutes to work and only did so due to the introduction of Bryan Mbuemo to proceedings at this late moment.

Two headers in those last 10 minutes looked to have drawn the Bees level, as we salvaged hope from the nightmare, only for the ref to rule out Shandon Baptiste’s equaliser for a ‘foul’ on Muric as the ball floated in over his outstretched arms.

Both goals came from simple passing moves down the right and beautiful crosses from Shandon Baptiste. The first of these landed on the diving head of Kristoffer Ajer 8 yards out in the centre of the box and he guided it home into an empty net.

In the explosion of hope that followed this goal the ref still couldn’t help making himself the centre of attention by showing Ajer a yellow card for daring to celebrate giving his team the chance to get something out of a match where they had started a man down and played 2 down for the past 74 minutes.

Baptiste’s goal came from another cross deep on the right, but this one flew over the heads of everyone in the box before dipping under the bar and into the top left postage stamp.

It was a finish of unrivalled beauty to snatch a draw from the jaws of defeat for Brentford and the relief was palpable, for all of 3 seconds before the ref once again decided to snatch the game away from the visitors.

This time the hosts were given a free-kick because Toney was jumping at the back post with Muric and the momentum of him trying to get on the end of the cross saw him land on top of Muric, who wasn’t getting any near the ball anyway.

Daring to have the instincts of a striker was enough for Toney to be punished though and condemn Brentford to yet another loss outside London.

I was fuming as I walked back to Burnley Manchester Road train station after the game and checking the table on the way home to see us only 4 points above the dreaded dotted line did nothing to soothe my anger at this great injustice (though Forest’s punishment has since widened the gap to 5 points).

Even writing this days later I cannot escape the feeling that Brentford were robbed of a crucial win in a relegation 6 pointer against a team that will be going down anyway.

We now have the international break to recover from this result and steel ourselves for a run in that that starts with back-to-back home games, against Manchester United and Brighton and Hove Albion respectively.

I will be missing the first of those due to work commitments, but will be making every Brentford game after that, using the fire ignited by this day at Turf Moor to roar us over the line to safety.