The Athletic.

Hello, I'm Mark Chapman. Welcome to the Athletic Football podcast.

Adam Crafton is with us as always. Later, we'll

catch up with Matt Slater after his trip to Qatar. But let's get straight to it and we're going to start

with the result of the weekend. Brentford's 4-1 win at Stanford Bridge over Chelsea.

Well, let's start the pod with Brentford.

Jay Harris is the Athletics Brentford correspondent, and he is with us.

On what has been a very good season, is this the crowning moment?

Yeah, definitely.

I think obviously the opening day victory over Arsenal was a really special moment,

but I think just with the context with, it was only a month ago that it felt like Brentford were in a real spot of bover. They had won in eight matches. And then since then, beating Norwich City, beating Burnley, and to then go to the, you know, the European champions, the world champions and win so convincingly and come from behind to win. I just think, you know, I'm sure we've all seen the scenes and the stands on Saturday at Stamford Bridge. Such a special moment, not just in Brentford season, but a lot of people are spoken to claiming that it, you know, it might be the best result in the club's history. What's changed then, from when they were going through their sticky spell to now, I would have thought for outsiders, it'd be very easy to go off, the signing

of Christian Erickson. But to those inside the club, to those with knowledge, is it something

more than that? Obviously, Erickson's definitely played a factor. I think Brentford had struggled

to create chances from open play all season. We all know that Ivan Tony's a fantastic goal score at this level. If he's given the opportunity, but he just wasn't given those opportunities, Erickson's definitely helped him with that. And before this game, they switched to a back four, which just seemed to make them a little bit more fluid. But actually, a return to a back three ended up being a tactical masterstroke, completely caught Chelsea off guard. So there's lots of different things that I think, you know, luck, that intangible thing is all just kind of falling into place with Brentford over the last few weeks. Did the score line on Saturday flatter them in any way? Or did they actually, you know, even before they went a goal down, were they looking, you know, like the team that was more likely to win the game? Yeah, I don't think it flattered them at all.

Like I said, because they lined up with the back three and the two wingbacks, I thought they were going to sit off Chelsea a little bit more and try to be as compact as possible. They ended up being quite an open game. First 20, 25 minutes, Brentford and with a much better side, they dominated Chelsea, really. Ivan Tony had two or three really, well, maybe not really good chances, but certainly decent enough chances to score.

And then that Rudiger, you know, really. Ivan Tony had two or three really, well, maybe not really good chances,

but certainly decent enough chances to score. And then that Rudiger, you know, Thunderbolt comes out

of nowhere, actually asked Thomas Frank after the game, you know, what was kind of going for in your mind,

you played so well in the first 45 minutes, had nothing to show for it. Rudigal scores that crazy

goal. And he did kind of say, I thought it was a little bit of, oh, no, here we go again. We're not going to get anything from this game. And then after that, just to give you a summary of how quickly Chelsea unraveled, there were 12 minutes and 10 seconds between Chelsea opening the scoring and Brentford going free one up. So all of that hard work that Brentford had kind of been putting in in the first half, suddenly just all came together in this 10, 12 minute spell.

And yeah, they were just phenomenal. Chelsea didn't know what to do. I think two calls even come out and said they weren't mature enough. They didn't defend properly. So yeah, Brentford, very, very good value for the scoreland. Talking to Adam before we started recording this, and sort of get to April in a season. and virtually every player of every team

has been analysed, interviewed, had articles written on them, featured player on a match of the day, whatever it may be.

...