Brentford vs Bournemouth match report: Mark Warburton backs up his promise to leave legacy
Brentford 3 Bournemouth 1
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Your support makes all the difference.As if competition at the top of the Championship was not fierce enough this season, recent news of the riches that will be available to even the worst Premier League team from the campaign after next has further intensified it.
Perhaps that is contributing to the nerves of the promotion contenders, half of whom dropped points again, including Bournemouth for the third successive match.
Brentford, equally unlikely Premier League material, had lost three of their last four games as the hitherto popular owner Matthew Benham chose a strange time to decide on a revamp of the whole management personnel, philosophy and structure. Mark Warburton and his assistant David Weir will leave at the end of the season while the sporting director, Frank McParland, is already tending his garden.
Benham owns a company that produces football statistics and he wants to use more of them in scouting. The change of philosophy “does not sit comfortably alongside my own thoughts and ideas,” Warburton wrote in his programme notes yesterday, adding that the announcement “was one that filled me with disappointment”. Declining to rock the listing boat any further, he has promised to do everything to deliver promotion, which would leave the hierarchy looking a little silly and cast a long shadow over the start of a first season at the highest level since 1947. “A fantastic reaction by a very talented squad of players,” was his reaction yesterday evening after a tremendous match.
Bournemouth, equally unfashionable, also have ambitious owners, who have shown their manager, Eddie Howe, such love that he returned to them from a higher level, having laid the foundations of Burnley’s push to the promised land. Howe was left frustrated at his team’s failure to capitalise on a period of dominance early in the second half, having gone in 2-1 down when the outstanding Alex Pritchard had a 30-yard free-kick palmed into the net by Artur Boruc.
Marc Pugh had equalised Jonathan Douglas’s opening goal but in the last 10 minutes Brentford repeatedly threatened to score on the break. Three times the Spanish midfielder Jota could have finished the game, hitting the goalkeeper twice and the bar once, before Chris Long finally did so in added time from Pritchard’s cross. Warburton left the pitch with the home crowd chanting his name.
Brentford (4-2-3-1) Button; Odubajo, Craig, Tarkowski, Dallas; Douglas, Diagouraga (McCormack , 74);Jota, Pritchard, Judge (Toral, 60); Gray (Long, 69).
Bournemouth (4-4-2) Boruc; Francis, Elphick, Cook, Daniels (Smith, 76); Ritchie (Fraser, h-t), MacDonald, Surman, Pugh; Kermorgant (Pitman, 63), Wilson.
Referee: Mike Dean
Man of the match: Pritchard (Brentford)
Match rating: 9/10
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