Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. OK let’s. Brentford will open next season in a fancy new pad less than a mile along the A4 near Kew Bridge, and on this evidence they will be playing in the Premier League.
Fulham, or indeed Cardiff, will get the chance to kick that claim into the Wembley bleachers next Tuesday in the Championship play-off final, but they might have to morph into Bayern Munich to do so.
The ancient football greensward that is Griffin Park is no more, given over to housing. Brentford’s new designer gaff, the Community Stadium, screams ballpark elite and fits comfortably into the glass and steel tableau rising by the old A4. And if ever a team shone with upward mobility it is the Thomas Frank construction, a unit leaving the past behind at speed, BMW speed.
The pace and movement of Brentford’s fabled frontline of Said Benrahma, Bryan Mbeumo and Ollie Watkins was worthy of an acronym that spells swanky German motor. This is your luxury brand of front-end power, rapid acceleration, brilliant in tight corners and wheels to burn. Swansea were grateful to keep their slender first-leg lead for 10 minutes, the point at which Watkins sliced the tie wide open.
They were behind after 15, via a nifty Emiliano Marcondes header, and gone at all levels immediately after the break when Benrahma volleyed Brentford towards nirvana.
At that point you feared for Swansea’s wellbeing, much like that of American tennis star Andy Roddick when, towards the end of his career, he was getting lamped not far from here on Centre Court by Roger Federer and was heard to plead “OK Rog, let’s keep it social.” Brentford obliged, allowing Swansea the courtesy of hope following an excellent Rhian Brewster finish 12 minutes from time. It was a nervy passage after that, which included a booking for Frank for preventing a throw-in.
Griffin Park must have been one of the few grounds left in England where a match could lose a ball to a neighbour’s garden without going over a roof. Maybe that is why it had to go, the cost of balls higher than a lower division centre-forward. The gap in the main stand to the left of the halfway line has been, since 1904, the magic portal conveying leather into the community. Not any more. Brentford are going well posh.
This being the start of heatwave week in London, the balmy late July temperatures coated the scene in a festival atmosphere. It was the kind of high summer night made for convening one last time with a beer or two to say farewell to a part of the London football milieu that, visually at least, remains locked in the early 20th century. You imagine the locals in the warren of streets surrounding it will be glad to have their Saturday afternoons back. The community this old patch once served has long since migrated to the other side of the M25, their former homes transformed from low-cost Brentford terracing into desirable ‘Chiswick’ cottages, with glass extensions on the back claimed by the brochure to bring the outside in.
The surreal atmosphere stripped the warm-up of any sense of reckoning. The Swansea boys flicked the ball about as if they had crossed the Thames into Kew Gardens and the holidays had begun. The whistle shattered the peace and brought a sense of urgency to proceedings. Marcondes set the tone with a shot from distance that was moving fast enough to catch a stunned Erwin Mulder by surprise.
The Swansea keeper punched it clear but was powerless to keep out Watkins, who brought the aggregate scores level after a lightning break following a Swansea corner. Four minutes later Marcondes, unmarked in the box, was left with the simple job of guiding Benrahma’s cross past Mulder from 10 yards.
Mbeumo was the next to have a go, cutting in off the left to strike the base of a post with a wicked right-footer. Again the move was born of a Swansea attack. Only keeper David Raya stood between Connor Roberts and what looked a certain goal. Raya got a hand to Roberts’ low drive, diverting it into the path of Pontus Jansson, who dribbled clear to trigger the lethal response.
The first mis-step in the final third came from Benrahma shortly before the break. Having burned off Mike van der Hoorn, the opportunity to kill the tie seemed to act like a brake on his rapid stride. A moment’s indecision took him wide and the ball bobbled off his shin to safety. He would make up for that emphatically a minute into the restart. And how.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3ghQVP2
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