Is The Brentford Defence Sorted?

At first, last season`s ambitions were realistically set at staying in this league. For this reason, it seemed that Warburton was happy to stick with James Tarkowski, Harlee Dean and Tony Craig in defence. Warbs directed his attention more to the attack, bringing in Jota, Alex Pritchard, Andre Gray etc. The defence was fairly solid, leaked a lot of goals in, but we won games because our attacking style would compensate. At this stage, where we were coasting in mid-table, the defence was good enough. However, it wasn`t until November where the Bees suddenly accelerated up the table and into the play-offs, ruthlessly dusting up many teams. Soon, Brentford`s season turned from the aim of avoiding relegation, to pushing for promotion. This is where the defence began to show its true colours. From the start of 2015, the main partnership was Dean-Tarkowski. The leakage of goals started to become a lot more important, and hindered our ‘promotion push` greatly, and then the 5-1 aggregate drubbing at Middlesbrough in the play-offs showed testament to why our defence wasn`t a promotion winning one.

As our promotion push developed, Bees fans began to realise that the defensive partnership of Dean-Tarkowski wasn`t good enough, and criticism of Dean in particular spiralled. The defence was under a lot more pressure at this stage, which resulted in unnecessary leakage`s of goals against average attacking teams such as Millwall, Cardiff and Nottingham Forest. Dean`s scrutiny was primarily because he simply isn`t good enough at this level. He was making stupid mistakes that cost us so many games, most notably Middlesbrough (home), Cardiff (home) and giving the ball away at home against Millwall leading to O`Brien`s goal. Some suggested it was pressure issues, but I felt that James Tarkowski handled this ‘pressure` a lot better. He was flawless for most of the season, he did have a few sketchy moments, but for the majority of the season he was class, and I reckon that a better defender than Dean alongside him would`ve been a lot better.

It didn`t take long for Matthew Giles and Rasmus Ankersen to find the solutions, bringing central defenders Yoann Barbet and Andreas Bjelland in. I don`t know enough to comment on Barbet currently. However, the possible partnership of Bjelland and Tarkowski is extremely exciting. Andreas Bjelland was signed from FC Twente for roughly £2.5 million. The Danish international has 21 caps for the national side, and has contributed to Denmark`s so far successful Euro qualifying campaign that has firmly placed them at second in Group I. Three or four Dutch journalists have rated Bjelland highly, and have suggested that he could go further than Brentford, and could`ve gone to an established Premier League club. Many Dutch journalists went on to say that he is one of, if not the best defender in the Dutch league, as well as the best Danish defender currently, which speaks volumes about our new signing. There is obviously a step up from the Dutch league to the Championship, and it will be interesting to see if he can adapt quickly to English football. With Tarkowski`s massive potential and class in defence, the partnership that they could have together might well be one of the best defensive partnerships this club will have seen so far. Having said all this, I`m definitely not discounting Yoann Barbet, it will be interesting to see how he can fight for his place as well as Bjelland, Tarkowski and Dean.