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Brentford sent a statement to the rest of the Premier League on Friday night with a 7-0 demolition of Eintracht Frankfurt in their pre-season friendly. The scoreline was startling — and so was the ease with which Thomas Frank's side picked apart their Bundesliga opponents from the opening minute to the final whistle.
Kevin Schade got the party started inside two minutes and doubled the advantage in the 70th minute. In between, Igor Thiago — Brentford's Brazilian striker who has been the subject of considerable summer attention — bagged a brace of his own, finishing on 41 and 68 minutes to remind anyone watching exactly why he is so difficult to contain when the service arrives. New signing Mamadou Sangaré made the perfect start to his Brentford career by marking his debut with a goal, while Dango Ouattara and Keane Lewis-Potter also got on the scoresheet to round off a comprehensive evening.
Frankfurt, for their part, never looked like stemming the tide. The evening took an uglier turn when their captain Robin Koch was forced off with an injury — the severity of which is not yet clear, but it cast a shadow over what was otherwise a one-sided afternoon for the German side.
Results like this in pre-season carry only so much weight. A 7-0 scoreline against a team mid-way through their own summer preparations tells you more about rhythm and organisation than about genuine readiness for competitive action. But the sharpness of the movement, the clinical finishing from Thiago and Schade, and Sangaré's confident debut — these are things worth noting.
Brentford open their Premier League campaign in less than a week. If Friday is anything to go by, they are in fine fettle heading into it.
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