Thomas Frank

Congrats to the Champions Elect. Not taking anything away from yourselves, but the game could have been far more interesting had Canos not missed the sitter, but it is what it is. We offered very little in the second half, and our quality really plummeted at the same time Norwich kept us at arm's length with good organisation and shape. We're gutted, obviously, but losing to Norwich was no disgrace. As the real Thomas Frank said, Norwich is a team who could still beat us if Brentford were on their A game, and we didn't even produce our A game. As a side note, every Norwich fan I've ever encountered face to face have been superb company. Never forget Bees fans getting a round of applause whilst we chanted "Chase Out" back in the mid-90's at our FA Cup win at Carrow Road, and then chatting to Norwich fans about him on the train back. All good-spirited, intelligent chat between football fans. Best wishes and hope to see you in the Prem next season (although I suspect it'll be playoffs for us, and we all know what that means for us!)

I'll disagree with you. We really really could do with a win. Any chance to nudge ourselves away from the others would be a massive advantage. It's a free hit for Norwich though. Tonight is all about how the managers set their team's mentality. If Norwich feel it's a free hit, they could play with more freedom. Ourselves, we might well keep it tight, which will be to our advantage, as we tend to do well on the counter with our pace. If Norwich treat us with respect, then it's ourselves who could get caught out. In any case, best two teams in the division playing tonight. Going to be a 4-4 draw.

Genuine discussion point here.....without balloon payments: How does the money coming into a club who has been relegated from the Premier League not give an advantage to them? £70 million over 3 seasons (I stand to be corrected) is a huge amount of money for being relegated. Factually, the owner has invested £100 million (since 2013), mainly on the stadium and off-field activities. I can't accurately tell you the precise apportionment, but at Griffin Park, we were losing money every week and the investment had to cover losses before player sales started to cover such losses, to the point we are now profitable. In respect of our ground, as Griffin Park was not financially viable, the ONLY choice available to us so that we could stay in the borough, was the brown-field site that Lionel Road was built on. It wasn't thought possible to build a stadium there due to the rail tracks, but a fan (architect) found a design that meant that we stood a chance of building the new stadium within the triangular space. Had we ever been successful in getting a site nearer to Heathrow, we'd have looked to build a 25,000 capacity stadium, but that was never on the cards. Therefore, 17,500 was not a choice, but it was the only way to get Brentford to move into a stadium that generated more income than Griffin Park, stay in the borough, and prevent our owner from having to start to recoup his investment. These points, plus the fact that we have been a perenially poor-performing club languishing around the bottom two divisions since the 1940's, means that we genuinely are a small club. We don't doubt that. Even with our business model generating profit due to player sales, we will never be able to compete on equal terms than clubs who are bigger than ourselves. The new stadium has closed the gap a little, and our ability to follow a strategy that allows us to buy cheap and sell high by being patient, means that we've closed the gap more. But make no bones about it, we are not on equal terms to most clubs in this division.

I don't think that's fair. We're entitled to think highly of ourselves because we do play good football and it's gotten us to challenge for promotion without balloon payments, in a small stadium, with less revenue, etc. Or would you prefer it if opposition football fans just said "yeah, we're not that good, nothing to be proud of, our football is crap, etc"? It doesn't work like that. The vast majority of Brentford fans are extremely clued up, know that either team can win tonight, but remain hopeful.