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Another midweek game for Preview Percy look at. And an 8pm start on Saturday as well. These days when he has late nights he becomes incoherent and grumpy. So its normal service then as he looks forward to Monday night’s visit of Brentford in the 5th Round of the FA Cup...

Next up we take a break from the travails of Premier League football as we move on to the 5th Round of the FA Cup, where we will play host to Brentford. Kick-off is slated for 7:30pm with extra-time and penalties being available to decide the tie on the night should they be required.




VAR will also give us twice the opportunity to find out that referees haven’t got a clue what they are doing, this being the first stage of the competition at which the system will come into play. Lucky us.

So Brentford, then. Recent form has been a bit of a mixed-bag. Their last six in the league read WWDLWD, starting with away wins at Villa (0-1) and Newcastle (2-3). This was followed by a 1-1 home draw with Arsenal and then a home defeat to Brighton (0-1).

The following 4-3 win up at Burnley was controversial. Burnley had regained parity from 3-0 down up at Turf Moor before Ashley Barnes appearing to equalise. A VAR check lasting over four minutes proved inconclusive so they disallowed it anyway, which was a bit harsh on Burnley. Their latest outing was a 0-0 draw with Bournemouth down at Dean Court, the Bees being on the receiving end of another favourable VAR decision which denied Bournemouth a clear penalty.

All of this has left them in seventh place with 44 points from 29 games. That’s four behind Liverpool who they play at Anfield on the last day of the season, potentially leaving the last of the European places to be decided by which team is best at conning the match officials.

In the Cup, they started with a 2-0 away win over a beleaguered Sheffield Wednesday side containing only one player over the age of 22. This earned them a trip to non-league Macclesfield who had reminded most of Croydon that they were Man Utd supporters after all when knocking Palace out in the third round. The Bees were slightly fortunate to get through that one, with the Silkmen missing a number of good opportunities either side of conceding the own goal that ultimately saw Brentford through to this 5th round tie.

Daisy reports that there’s not an awful lot to report on the winter window transfer front. They spent £8.7m on Belgian Under 19 striker Kaye Furo, that money crossing the channel in the direction of Club Brugge. Furo was part of the squad that demolished Rangers 9-1 on aggregate in Europe earlier this season. His sole appearance for Brentford since his arrival in January was in the Cup match up at Macclesfield and he has yet to trouble the statisticians responsible for League appearances.

They also brought in a youngster from Chelsea in the form of Joseph Wheeler-Henry on an end of season loan. However, he’s gone into the Brentford B team – shouldn’t that be the Brentford Bee Team? - and is not expected to feature in the first team any time soon.

I think that’s quite enough of them, don’t you? On we move to the Wild And Wacky World Of Association Football. And there’s been a total silence from FIFA in general and Gianni Infantino in particular in relation to the ludicrous peace prize awarded to Donald Trump, which just goes to show that, like estate agents, PGMOL employees, Parking Enforcement Officials and people who live in Croydon, football politicians have no shame.




Meanwhile, another organisation that can rival that little lot is Liverpool FC. They have responded to criticism of their stewarding the other week by claiming that their decision to confiscate any visible signs of protest from West Ham supporters was entirely of their own making, and that no requests were made by our owners regarding the protests. Which may be true, but doesn’t explain why some stewards claimed to have been told that that had been the case.

Somebody is lying there. It also doesn’t explain why they felt the need to confiscate protest material in the first place. Their only comment referred to “stadium flag policy” which would seem to conflict with their home crowd policy, which allowed flags that were a lot bigger than those confiscated. And that didn’t cover the red cards for which nobody could provide any sort of sensible reason for banning.

Meanwhile closer to home, having had more time to read and digest the horror story that is the recently published accounts. It was highly amusing to discover that the narrative contained a statement that no business seems to be able to live without including in their published material. The wordings may differ slightly between organisations but ours says that:

Fans are the lifeblood of our club and are always foremost in our decision-making and: We have a Board objective around putting our fans first in our decision-making recognising our custodianship

I’m sure if you look at the accounts of, to think of a random example, Thames Water, there is a similar statement to the effect that “the customer is at the heart of everything we do”. Says it all, really.

On the pitch, Wednesday night saw us pick up another welcome three points over Fulham whose supporters seemed to be taking a leaf out of the Anfield Trappist school of support. The noisiest thing about the whole affair was Marco Silva whose post-match ramblings were straight out of the Donald Trump “repeat a lie” school of self-delusion.

Fernandes should, apparently, have received a second yellow card for a challenge which, even of first viewing was palpably not a foul. Silva conveniently ignored the Iwobi handball which, had we had anyone honest in charge of VAR, would have resulted in an early penalty which might have made the rest of the evening a lot easier to watch for those of us with diabetes and blood pressure issues.

The goal itself, though it had its gestation in some spectacularly poor defending between Poor Leno and “Un-Shirley” Bassey, still required some excellent work from Bowen and Summerville, Bowen’s touch showed good anticipation but Jimmy still had a lot to do with the ‘keeper and three defenders in front of him. Indeed it seemed for a second that he might have taken half a second too long.




However, oh us of little faith, his form of late is such that we should have known that he knew what he was doing. On finally getting home after that interminably long walk through Bishop’s Park, which seems to get longer by the year, I watched the goal again and the shot was thread through the eye of a needle between two defenders. Excellent finish.

Even the manager took time out to praise the fans for the decibels put into the support, though one or two of the chants might not have pleased his bosses it’s fair to say. Meanwhile, there was something heart warming about Summerville being quoted as saying “I don’t know why they call me Jimmy!”

For this one, Pab and Fab are the only absentees from the squad, with Freddie Potts having completed his ban. Whilst I’m not a fan of sticking out different teams for the Cup I’m sure the manager will have a different starting line-up for this one than took to the pitch on Wednesday night. Not as many as the ten changes made for the Burton tie maybe, but a few key players may find themselves watching from the racing car seats.

As I say, as an old fuddy-duddy I’m not a fan of such notions but I guess I can understand it, other results being what they were in midweek. By the way what’s the betting that Spurs fan the TV cameras kept cutting to on Thursday has shaved off his beard to avoid recognition?

The prediction, as ever, will depend largely on the composition of the teams. Brentford can afford to put out their strongest XI if they want to – they are on the fringes of European qualification in the league so they have no worries on that front.

Against all instinct I’m going to plump for us to progress in this tie on the grounds that, well, it’s the Cup. I’m also heartily fed up of being asked whether I’d take relegation if it meant us winning the Cup. I’d like both please.

So the £2.50 that I was going to send to Marco Silva towards his next appointment at Specsavers will instead be spent on a wager for the match to finish 2-2 AET, with us to prevail on penalties. Off you go Mr Winstone and if I’m right I may be a bit late home on Monday Daisy.

Enjoy the game!




When last we met at the Ozempic: Lost 0-2 (Premier League October 2025)

Dreadful performance which could have been even worse but for some wayward finishing. Late goals in each half from Thiago and Schade did the damage.

Referee: Andrew Madley

Teams know that he can’t tell a dive from a tin of spam. Watch Brentford play on that.

Danger Man: Thiago

19 goals across all competitions this season tells its own story.

Percy and Daisy’s Amazing Brentford Fact Of The Week Type Thing

According one of those “facts about Brentford” things one has to resort to looking at when trying to find out something interesting about a place like Brentford, the town was considered to be the County Town of Middlesex in 1795, despite having no town hall or public buildings. Something that is – and honestly this is a direct quote – “causing confusion that remains to this day”. Much as it may bother the good residents of that part of the London Borough of Hounslow, I have to say that it’s not caused me much in way of sleepless nights.

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