Brentford 4 Newcastle 2

Image: Van den Berg v Barnes

Bees riding high

Brentford 4, Newcastle United 2; 07.12.24

This was the finest performance by Brentford in their Premier League history. A bold statement indeed, but don’t take my word for it. Alan Shearer, one of the finest strikers in the game over many years, was so taken with the demolition of Newcastle – especially in the second half, I suspect – that on Match of the Day he asked host Gary Lineker to relay his admiration to head coach Thomas Frank during the review of the game.

Good? They were sensational and here’s the way that a damp and murky afternoon unfolded at the Gtech Community Stadium.

To begin with, Frank’s starting line-up was unfamiliar to the Bees’ faithful. No hat-trick hero, Kevin Schade, from the last home game. No, Mikkel Damsgaard, whose wonderful form of late had made him a key midfield presence until the disappointing defeat on 3 December, in which he had scored the only Brentford goal.

Image: Brentford’s Yarmoliuk  holds up the Magpies’ super-speedy Barnes

Instead, the injury-prone, Brazilian/Spanish signing Igor Thiago, who was no sooner in a Brentford kit than injured in a pre-season friendly, led the forward line wearing what was Ivan Toney’s number 9 shirt. This was to be Igor’s Bees starting line-up debut just so long as he didn’t get injured in the warm-up.

Having sorted out this new formation, home fans were delighted to see Bryan Mbeumo score a splendid goal after just eight minutes, cutting in from the wing and threading his way through the Newcastle defence and sending his shot out of visiting keeper Nick Pope’s reach.

Image: Mbeumo welcomes in December with an 8-minute goal

Three minutes later the Magpies retaliated through Alexander Isak, showing that they were no mugs. Game on, the Bees realised, even though the visitors’ bumpy ride was far from their excellent record of the previous season.

Another strike, by the in-form sharp-shooter Yoane Wissa, saw this scenario repeated four minutes later, with Jacob Murphy finding Harvey Barnes for the winger to send a crackerjack shot into the far corner of Mark Flekken’s net. And so to half-time at 2-2, evens-stevens even if the home crowd had already seen enough to bolster their enthusiasm.

Poor Newcastle, they must have thought a football version of Storm Darragh had arrived in West London. Brentford’s passing moves suddenly became pin-point accurate – even those which usually prompted palpitations among supporters of a nervous disposition.

The defence looked rock-solid; Mbeumo became even more tantalising for the opposition as Kieran Trippier and Anthony Gordon – both hot properties – were among those subbed from the Newcastle bench. Begging their pardon, their presence on the field didn’t seem to make the slightest difference.

For the Bees, coach Frank brought on players as and when he thought them good news for a team where some of the players were visibly wilting. Wissa, for example, ran like a greyhound until he didn’t, where upon Ben Mee replaced him for the closing minutes.

Image: You see him here, you see him there… for 96 minutes man-of-the match Mbeumo covered every angle

And remember those stellar stars missing from the starting line-up? Damsgaard brought fresh legs to relieve Carvalho and Schade in place of Thiago, who had worked industrially until he began to run out of puff.

Nathan Collins played solidly in defence while seeking opportunities to attack, which after 56 minutes led to him racing into the penalty box and side-footing the ball past Pope and neatly inside the far post. And Schade, an infrequent marksman until a fortnight before, added another notch on his belt by having the presence of mind to chip the ball over the advancing Pope to score a fourth in the added time at the end.

Mbeumo almost snatched a fifth when dispossessing Pope, who had strayed a considerable distance from his area, but Dan Burn just won the race to reach the ball just before it crossed the goal line.

As the crowd lingered to join coach Frank and his team happily celebrating a remarkable victory, I asked my mate Charlie for his thoughts.

‘Never happened before,’ said Charlie, ‘but I’m speechless.’

Brentford (3-4-2-1): Flekken; Pinnock, Collins, van den Berg; Lewis-Potter, Nørgaard, Yarmoliuk (Maghoma 95); Mbeumo, Fabio Carvalho (Damsgaard 73); Wissa (Mee 87), Thiago (Schade 73).

Newcastle United (4-3-3): Pope; Hall (Trippier 83), Burn, Schär, Livramento; Joelinton (Tenali 60), Bruno Guimarães; Longstaff (Wilson 73), Barnes (Almirón 73), Isak, Murphy (Gordon 60).

Bill Hagerty is a contributing editor to the Bees United website. Photographs by Liz Vercoe.

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