Your team's favourite five matches

[sledger]

That Leeds game another contender for one of my top 5 worst tbh.

Great game for the neutral though

 

[Tom Halsey]

Yeah I often forget 02/03 when thinking of teams blowing a lead but it's up there, not quite matching the previous two though. The Leeds game was a great game actually, yeah.

City's overhauling of us in 11/12 was very unexpected too, albeit they did it over a far shorter period. I recall us being 1/40 to win the title with the bookies, and someone (Alan McInally I think) on Gilette Soccer Special said "if you've got a spare £40k you might as well take the free grand on that". We lost to Wigan later that night, setting the balls-up in motion. I hope no-one took his advice.

 

[dontcloseyoureyes]

If I was a United fan, that Everton game would be one of the worst memories in recent history for me I reckon. I remember watching that game and I just couldn't believe what happened in the last ten minutes. They shouldn't have even been in it, you'd been killing them for most of the game.

 

[Pothas]

These ones are personal and mostly from fairly recently. It is not like I have any glorious play-off final victories to pick from so just some of the games that I have been to that I enjoyed the most.


Brentford 2 Sunderland 1 FA cup 4th Round, 2006

It was only the 4th round and we were playing one of the worst sides in Premier League history but this is still my favourite Brentford cup moment, ahead of beating Everton in the League cup and almost beating Chelsea in the FA cup. This was very much the 'old' Brentford but a pretty good version of it and we had a huge chance of promotion that season but this game was pretty much all about DJ Campbell, at the time he was about as good as I could envisage a Brentford player being and this was his greatest moment. Of course it all went horribly wrong after this, he immediately got sold to Birmingham, we bought an astonishingly bad replacement, came 3rd in the League, lost the play-offs and got relegated the next season.


Brentford 1 Preston 0, 2014

The most obvious one in here, our promotion was not especially dramatic but it was wonderfully cathartic after what had happened the season before, sealed with a penalty as well although we still managed to miss one in the second half. Remember very little of the game itself it was all about the final whistle (well actually waiting for the final whistle from another game) my Dad not going to that game was the only thing that was missing. Still can't believe he managed to miss it.


Brentford 3 Brighton 2, 2014

Could have had loads of games from this season and we had better wins but this was early season and it was the moment when we realised we could do far more than just survive in the Championship, the level of football we played was just so much higher than anything I had seen before. It was also the first time we properly saw Jota, remember my Dad saying during the warm up 'what is that guy doing playing for Brentford, he looks like a Real Madrid player.' We have had better players since but he was the first.


Burton 3 Brentford 5, 2017

This game did not really mean anything, we were very much mid table that season. It was just a ridiculously fun match with us 3-1 down at half time after letting in some horrendous goals before an amazing second half. We were so fun the second half of that season with Jota and Canos returning. I also just loved going to Burton, a lot of away games in the Championship are in big Premier League sized stadiums but Burton barely felt like League Two, it was magnificent.


Brentford 5 Sheffield Wednesday 0, 2020

Huge recency bias here, it was the last game I went to but it also means by far the most of all of these. Turns out this was the last game I will ever see at Griffin Park. It seems pretty obvious looking back now that football was about to stop for a while but honestly it only briefly crossed my mind while watching the game that this was the last time we would be there. As for the game itself we were brilliant, this is easily the best squad we have ever had (I am ignoring the 1930s here) and this was one of our very best performances of the season. The football we play now is light years ahead of anything I could have imagined but all done in that same beautiful ramshackle of a football ground. It is going to be so strange seeing it for the last time on TV with no fans so I am always going to try and think of this game as its perfect end. I will miss it so much.

 

[Uppercut]

I've largely blocked it out for reasons of mental wellbeing, but 2002/03 was quite a big squeak from us. We were 8 points ahead going into March, but then lost at Blackburn, turned leads into draws at Villa and the Trotters and finally ran up the white flag at home to Leeds (who'd been flirting the relegation all season), going down 3-2 in the penultimate game.

United just kept ****ing winning. Think we may even have been the only team to take points off them from March to the end of the season when we held them 2-2 at Highbury (after being ahead 2-1, obvz).

Yeah this was one of my favourite seasons. We had by far the tougher run-in, were widely expected to drop points away to a pretty good Newcastle side and absolutely mauled them, 6-2 I think it was.

The 2-2 was odd because on paper it favoured Arsenal, but it really didn’t feel that way at the time.

 

[sledger]

These ones are personal and mostly from fairly recently. It is not like I have any glorious play-off final victories to pick from so just some of the games that I have been to that I enjoyed the most.


Brentford 2 Sunderland 1 FA cup 4th Round, 2006

It was only the 4th round and we were playing one of the worst sides in Premier League history but this is still my favourite Brentford cup moment, ahead of beating Everton in the League cup and almost beating Chelsea in the FA cup. This was very much the 'old' Brentford but a pretty good version of it and we had a huge chance of promotion that season but this game was pretty much all about DJ Campbell, at the time he was about as good as I could envisage a Brentford player being and this was his greatest moment. Of course it all went horribly wrong after this, he immediately got sold to Birmingham, we bought an astonishingly bad replacement, came 3rd in the League, lost the play-offs and got relegated the next season.


Brentford 1 Preston 0, 2014

The most obvious one in here, our promotion was not especially dramatic but it was wonderfully cathartic after what had happened the season before, sealed with a penalty as well although we still managed to miss one in the second half. Remember very little of the game itself it was all about the final whistle (well actually waiting for the final whistle from another game) my Dad not going to that game was the only thing that was missing. Still can't believe he managed to miss it.


Brentford 3 Brighton 2, 2014

Could have had loads of games from this season and we had better wins but this was early season and it was the moment when we realised we could do far more than just survive in the Championship, the level of football we played was just so much higher than anything I had seen before. It was also the first time we properly saw Jota, remember my Dad saying during the warm up 'what is that guy doing playing for Brentford, he looks like a Real Madrid player.' We have had better players since but he was the first.


Burton 3 Brentford 5, 2017

This game did not really mean anything, we were very much mid table that season. It was just a ridiculously fun match with us 3-1 down at half time after letting in some horrendous goals before an amazing second half. We were so fun the second half of that season with Jota and Canos returning. I also just loved going to Burton, a lot of away games in the Championship are in big Premier League sized stadiums but Burton barely felt like League Two, it was magnificent.


Brentford 5 Sheffield Wednesday 0, 2020

Huge recency bias here, it was the last game I went to but it also means by far the most of all of these. Turns out this was the last game I will ever see at Griffin Park. It seems pretty obvious looking back now that football was about to stop for a while but honestly it only briefly crossed my mind while watching the game that this was the last time we would be there. As for the game itself we were brilliant, this is easily the best squad we have ever had (I am ignoring the 1930s here) and this was one of our very best performances of the season. The football we play now is light years ahead of anything I could have imagined but all done in that same beautiful ramshackle of a football ground. It is going to be so strange seeing it for the last time on TV with no fans so I am always going to try and think of this game as its perfect end. I will miss it so much.

What a great post.

 

[sledger]

Who was the really awful replacement for DJ Campbell, by the way? I can't remember.

 

[Pothas]

Calum Willock. We may have had worse strikers over the years but he is right up there. His finest moment was taking a complete air shot, falling over and somehow being given a penalty.

 

[sledger]

Haha have no memory of him at all, but a quick search on Wikipedia suggests that his season and a half with Bees was about as good as it ever got for him. Has played for about a million other clubs since.

 

[Pothas]

The astonishing thing is that he managed to score quite a few goals for Peterborough.

 

[Uppercut]

What a great post.

Haha right? Makes me want to follow a team and go to all their games.

 

[wpdavid]

In years to come we may look back and wonder how we accumulated four comments about Calum Willock's career. I'd love to think that he reads CW from time to time.

EDIT
Disappointingly unrelated to Arsenal's Joe Willock who I heard of for the first time last night.

 

[Lillian Thomson]

If we’re sharing Brentford memories I have one from the early 70’s. Plymouth 0 Brentford 1. The “goal” went wide of the post and hit the back wall and rippled the outside of the back of the net. It never got near to entering the goal. It took Stuart Atwell appearing as a referee about 40 years later before its like was seen again.