Brentford head coach Frank: Millwall formation switch must have been because they feared us

BY RICHARD CAWLEY

Brentford head coach Thomas Frank claimed that Millwall’s change in formation was because they feared the west London side.

The Lions went with the three-man central defence that has helped them pick up their away form.

And Aiden O’Brien netted the first-half winner after Brentford goalkeeper David Raya was tackled by Jayson Molumby.

Frank said: “It was a clear nil-nil game – a scrappy game from both sides.

“Millwall created zero chances in the game – we gave them the goal. It’s no secret that David made a mistake but he’s been absolutely amazing this season. For me he is potentially the best keeper in the division.

“Football is a game of mistakes, that happens. We move on. The rest of the game we were chasing.

“Millwall made it difficult for us, so you also need to give them a bit of credit for that because normally we’re extremely dangerous going forward.

“I haven’t seen them play 3-4-3 at home, they normally do that away from home – so they must have feared us, which I understand. But credit to them, they kept us quite quiet.

“We knew they could do 3-4-3 or 4-4-2 but to be fair we expected 4-4-2 because they have done that all their home games. As soon as we got the line up we could see it would be 3-4-3 and we were prepared for both.

“We should have won more duels and second goals – have been stronger.

“It was a very difficult pitch. No excuses, it makes it more difficult when you want to control it. It was not a good pitch to play football on. Let me put it this way, Gary Rowett said before: ‘Sorry for the pitch – it’s what we have so far’.

“Come on….football is football. Football is played on beautiful pitches sometimes and difficult pitches sometimes. We’re 100 per cent not losing because of the pitch today. I just say it makes it more difficult if you want to open up a team and you want to pass it.

“If it does then we just have to find another solution.

“One-one would’ve been a fair result. It should have definitely been a draw today, but football is not like that with things happening.”