Frank on Bees' defending, professional fouls, Ivan Toney and Winston Reid
Thomas Frank said a return to defensive solidity was the key to Brentford rediscovering the winning formula against Sheffield Wednesday.
The Bees weathered a difficult start to ease to a 3-0 victory over the Owls in last night's clash at Brentford Community Stadium.
It was a nervous start from his side following an unexpected run of three successive defeats but goals from Bryan Mbeumo, Saman Ghoddos and Mads Bech Sorensen completed an ultimately convincing victory.
"The most important thing is that we defended very well," said the Bees boss.
“We took the initiative again, but on top of that we kept a clean sheet and scored three goals. It was a solid performance – we love to defend as a team and that was back today.
"We win or learn. Today we won and we showed that we've learned from some of the other games.
"The most 'bad' performance we have given this year was the Coventry game, but this was back to 'normal' defensive standards. We showed this most of the season, we gave little away.
"We know we have a good structure, and want to press high, press forward and all that, but today it was simple - about getting on the ball, aggressive pressure and win your duel. We did that to perfection."
Frank has had to contend with a few injuries to key players in recent weeks, but was boosted by the early return of talismanic striker Ivan Toney, who was able to come off the bench after an hour and Emiliano Marcondes also made a return, having been out for several weeks.
"It was positive that Ivan could come off the bench," Frank said of the goal-machine who was missing for the first time this season in the weekend defeat at Coventry.
“After Tuesday’s press conference I got the news that Ivan was much better than we expected, but was not fit to start.
“It was a surprise that he recovered that well, but it wasn’t possible for him to play more than he did today – he hasn’t trained. It was a late call.”
However, Frank revealed that Josh Dasilva, who was another second-half substitute, will again not be fit to start against Stoke on Saturday.
Brentford made sure there would be no Owls fightback by committing two very cynical 'professional fouls' to prevent breakaways. Sergi Canos and Henrik Dalsgaard were both yellow carded after taking 'one for the team.'
Frank believes his players should have done the same at QPR recently to prevent a Rangers attack which led to a goal.
"We showed we had learned from those last few games and that QPR game hopefully," he said.
“We were clever enough to make those professional fouls – we did those twice today. Every team does them against us, so it is part of the game.”
Frank also had good words about on-loan veteran defender Winston Reid. He said: “With Winston, just his presence on the pitch is spreading among his team-mates.
“We knew when we signed him we needed his personality and experience. He was a giant out there.
“We had two very good centre-backs who had done well, we needed him to come up to speed in terms of fitness and every player needs to be in top shape. Winston is getting there.”
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