The Athletic

Hello, I'm Dan Bardell and welcome to the weekend preview on the Athletic Football Podcast, sponsored by Bet365.

Each and every Friday will be here to preview the best of the weekend's Premier League action.

And joining me to do just that is my co-host George Ellick and Bet365's Steve Freeth.

George, I'll come to you first. How are you?

I'm good. I feel excited. I feel like

we're being rewarded for persevering with the football season without any fans having to watch

countless games on the Super. I've already been to a couple of EFL games. I was at Bournemouth

against West Brom on the last Friday night. I was at the Valley for Charlton against AFC Wimbled and the glamour tie of the Carrabah Cup. And having fans back in stadiums is incredible. So I can't wait for the Premier League to get started and for all those fans to get back into their grounds and watch their teams. Yeah, I'll tell you what, I cannot wait for an away day on Saturday. It's been absolutely way too long, doing normal things like that in my life. And Steve? I'm a lot more relaxed now Jack Grealish has left villa. I can start to enjoy him a bit more, Dan. I can start to appreciate the qualities that that super midfielder has. I'd say what, one day I will do a podcast without Jack Grealish coming up. But now, unfortunately, for me, it's coming up in a wind-up sense rather than just having a nice little chat about him. But never mind. That has been another small move in the transfer market as well, Steve, with Messies gone to PSG, which a few weeks ago would have been completely mad. Champions League, I mean, I presume they're favourites now. Yeah, well, you know what? PSG are actually 11 to 4 favourites to win it for the first time, of course. Lionel Messi as well, everyone wants to know how many goals is he's going to get. He's actually 10 to 1 to score 40 or more goals. I think we're just thinking that he's going to score a hatful when we do see. It will be interesting to see how it gets on, of course. Plenty of messy content as well on the Athletic, as well as Jagrelish as well. Before we dive into the podcast, let me quickly remind you that you can sign up to the Athletic and read those pieces and much, much more. And if you do that at the moment, you'll save 33% as well. So that's just £3.33 a month for an entire year. Right then, first game of the Premier League season. It's a Friday night kickoff. I'm not sure I'm on board with games starting on a Friday in the Premier League. This isn't the EFL, but George, Brentford were EFL. Sorry, that was a bit harsh, making that like your NFL standard. Yeah, that was a bit of out of order. Steve's the baggage fan, not me, Dan. Yeah, that's true. That's true. I don't know why I did that. Brentford lit up the EFL, to be fair, for a number of number of years. I used to hate it when Villa had to play them because we never beat them in the championship. but they're now in the Premier League and it's going to be really interesting to see them. What can we expect from them?

Yeah. I used to hate it when Villa had to play them because we never beat them in the championship, but they're now in the Premier League, and it's going to be really interesting to see them. What can we expect from them? Yeah, it will be. And just on that Friday night Premier League point, I actually agree because it means that no one's watching me on Sky on a Friday night if there's a Premier League game on because everyone's watching that instead. I'll record it. Good, good man. With, yeah, with Brentwood, with Brentford, it's interesting because I was reading some quotes from Thomas Frank, their manager today, and he was talking about how they were going to attack the Premier League. And there's no doubt that they are a very good attacking side. You know, they were the top scorers in the championship last season. But I don't think this is going to be a continuation of the kind of teams we've seen come up and try and blitz the league before. You know, Leeds managed to do it successfully. We've seen, you know, dating back nearly a decade. We saw Blackpool do it successfully for half a season and then fall away and get relegated. We saw Norwich in their last campaign coming up and playing this really attacking brand of football and getting relegated bottom. even Sheffley United to an extent did it in their first season up and did it better. I don't think this is what we're going to see from this Brentford side, even though they are a very proficient attacking team. And the main reason for that is because Thomas Frank, their manager, is pretty pragmatic at the end of the day. Even though they did score a lot of goals last season,

it was built upon a pretty solid foundation, a decent defence.

And that defence is mainly remaining the same.

Ethan Pinnock and Pontessiansen, two defenders who deserve their chance here.

And Christopher Ayer from Celtic comes in to be the third member there.

And that is going to be the difference, I think, is that they're not going to be a side who necessarily concedes loads of goals and scores plenty too. I'd anticipate they're going to be probably more built on a solid foundation and looking to get the ball into Ivan Tony wherever possible because this is a player who I'm pretty bullish in saying it now and I even said it before last season, he'll be playing for England very soon. It's a matter of time until he's scoring Premier League goals. And as soon as he does do that, he'll be getting it in the England squad. And quotes of 40 to 1 with Bet365 about him being top goal scorer, you could do much worse because he's a player who's been top goal scorer in League 1, top goal scoring the championship. He's going to start every game where he's fit for Brentford, and he's definitely got the talent to cause Premier League defences, a lot of problems. I can tell you he's absolutely not going to do any of those things, George, because he's straight in my fantasy football team, so he's finished here for the season. Between that's been calling that.

Yeah.

And Steve, you're used to getting promoted and coming back down.

Why are Brentford not going to go back down?

Well, I think everyone's rightly applauding them for the way that they go about their business,

particularly in the transfer market, the model that they do.

And I think we're all excited to see actually how they do. You know, the three teams that have gone up there, they're the outsiders of the three, so to speak, to be relegated, listen, to do anything like Leeds did last time, I think, you know, it's a big ask, isn't it? I can't really see them doing anything like that. But as George pointed out,

Ivan Tony,

...