Wear Side Of Tears

Long journeys to away games are par for the course for all football fans, especially Truro fans who got free food and a free programme for travelling to Carlisle this weekend.

I’m no stranger to such long hauls with 6 and 7 hour round trips a staple of my game days for this blog but this slog up to Sunderland was my longest haul of all, totalling 9 hours for the round trip, though it was nothing on one fan I spoke to on the Tyne-Wear metro who had set off from Portsmouth at 6am to make it to the Stadium of Light for kick-off.

That kind of journey feels worth every second when your team wins or even draws having given their all every second of the match.

I can’t speak for my fellow Bees fan from Pompey, but last weekend the travel felt hellish for me as I trudged home from the north east after witnessing one of the most hopeless performances I have ever seen from Brentford.

Throughout the first half we played like we were scared of what Sunderland can do and that any attempt to assert ourselves on proceedings would lead to a rout.

Playing a double defensive midfield pivot against a team that is newly promoted to the league sends out the message that we are full of fear and combined with a 3 in attacking midfield that seemed locked in immortal combat to beat Igor Thiago to be the furthest forward we left a gaping hole in midfield and were duly destroyed more thoroughly than the Romans at Cannae.

Given the freedom of Wearside to run the midfield Sunderland took a stranglehold on the tempo of the match and were able to torment us at will, with our only respite coming from a few punted balls forward that were held up well by Thiago.

The only real saving grave from the first half was that Sunderland seemed incapable of threatening Kelleher’s goal despite their overwhelming control of the momentum of the match.

In fact it was Brentford who had the ball in the net first, Dango Ouattara coolly slotting home from a flowing counter attacking move, only to see this opener chalked out for offside.

This was the best action of a truly turgid first half that left me gobsmacked that neither team made any changes at half time to try and breathe life into their performance.

It feels exceedingly harsh to single out any Brentford players from a parade of dross in that first half, but our ex-Liverpool trio of Henderson, Van den Berg and Kelleher were particularly below par throughout the first half.

Kelleher inspired no confidence in his defenders and seemed jittery every-time a home player advanced into the final third, Henderson’s legendary range of passes seemed to have evaporated and Van den Berg seemed to forget that we were in our away kit for this one, with every other pass ending up at the feet of a Sunderland attacker.

Miracles can happen though and we made it into the break without conceding, but whilst the performance improved in the second half the one thing that truly matters is the scoreline and that got markedly worse.

Before I get to the worst part of the day though lets touch on the good.

Brentford came out of the tunnel with a renewed sense of purpose, and midfielders now with enough discipline to stay in midfield, leading to some half decent attacking play from the men in Grey.

This new attacking intent from the Bees bore fruit in the 57th minute when Nathan Collins was wrestled to the ground at the back post by Renildo Mandava and the visitors were presented with a golden opportunity to take the lead from the spot.

Predictably this golden gift horse was passed up by Brentford and in a manner that was more embarrassing than that childhood nightmare of being asked to speak in school assembly and you look down to see you have no clothes on, yes it really was that bad…

Having won the penalty, our captains Collins walked away from the box and left his team too it, which wouldn’t have been so bad if any of the strikers had claimed the ball and stepped up to take the responsibility for this high pressure moment but none did.

The natural choices should have been either Igor Thiago or Dango Ouattara but neither of them showed the slightest interest in taking on this responsibility, with ex-England captain Jordan Henderson taking the ball under his wing instead and handing it to Kevin Shade.

Reflecting the mood emanating from the players a tidal wave of dread swept through the away fans and seconds later this dread was confirmed as Shade slid a weak shot way too close to Robin Roefs for any keeper to ever let past them.

Things would soon improve though and Brentford even took the lead with just 13 minutes to go till full-time with Frank Onyeka, who only returned to London this season after spending last season out in Serie A, crossing the ball onto the forehead of Igor Thiago to head home, just 6 minutes after super Frank was introduced to the action.

That’s one substitution that worked out brilliantly for Brentford, so now for one that worked out dreadfully from a far less suspected source.

Rico Henry has been one of the most consistent performers for The Bees since our return to the Premier League, but on this occasion his return to the pitch heralded the death knell to our lead.

His challenge on Habib Diarra looked a world away from the wrestling move laid down on Collins at the hour mark but it was deemed similar enough by the ref to result in a penalty, which Enzo Le Fee smashed powerfully to Kelleher’s left as the keeper dove right.

This set up the final ten minutes of Sunderland pressure on Brentford’s back line and in the 96th minute the pressure told when Enzo Le Fee tied Michael Kayode in knots on the left touch line before feeding it back for a deep cross to be delivered into the box, where it was met by Sunderland’s super-sub Wilson Isidor to flick home.

Why Isidor had the space to flick home a free header from 6-yards out is a question for the ages, as is how the ball then managed to squirm under an outstretched Kelleher, but all anyone in the home end cared about was that he had as they erupted in extasy.

For those of us in the away end it was a different feeling altogether as we flowed down the stairs and out to the metro back to Newcastle and our connections home, one of disbelief and apprehension.

When you add this insipid performance to the tragedy on the Trent it seems that our away games this season are not ones we can expect points from and with our next 3 away games all being London derbies there could be some dark times ahead for Brentford fans still in the capital, with away day losses to be taunted by at work for weeks.

Obviously I hope this doesn’t happen and that we start to click on the road with performances and results to blow us all away, starting in 12 days time at that cottage around the corner.

First though we welcome the other lot in West London to our home this Saturday and I hope we have improved a lot over the international break or this could be a very long season.