Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.Thomas Frank is no longer Brentford’s managerand that’s not easy to write. We knew the day was drawing near but it’s still a bitter pill to swallow. It feels like a break-up, a one-sided one where we do not get the chance to ask why and how. And the grief supporters are experiencing is because we were so emotionally invested in a partnership that brought us so much joy in the near seven years we had together.
Rewind to October 2018, when Frank was appointed as Dean Smith’s successor, and not many of us would have thought we would now be looking forward to a fifth campaign in the top flight. There is much to be grateful to Frank and his team for. They brought us the fabled BMW (Saïd Benrahma, Bryan Mbeumo and Ollie Watkins); theybroke our playoff hoodooat the 10th time of asking to take us to the Premier League; they set club records and beat some of the best teams in the land. It really has been quite the ride.
Friday 13 August 2021; Brentford took on Arsenal under the lights, with television cameras broadcasting our first game in the Premier League. Frank made his entrance, arms waving, urging fans young and old to bring the noise. They delivered, as did the team.We had announced our arrival with a 2-0 win, and we’ve not been lower than 16thsince, which is some achievement for a side expected to go straight back down.
Frank would often bring up the “we’re just a bus stop in Hounslow” chant in our early years back in the top division. It was self-deprecating, a way to take ownership of how QPR supporters had mocked us a few years before, and its use by the manager showed he got it and he got us. Likewise we got him. That bond came from the culture cultivated at the club. A them-against-us mentality. We do not have the financial riches many in the Premier League have so we have had to do things differently in order to compete; using data as well as traditional methods to scout the lower leagues for the next big thing. We were also one of the first clubs in the top flight to employ a set-piece coach and a throw-in coach. It’s theBrentfordway; a method of finding an edge. We cannot challenge the giants in wealth or stature but we can be smarter than them.
Hence Frank working out pretty quickly that the brand of football that got us promoted was not going to work in the Premier League. Certainly not straight away. So in the first few years after coming up we played a dogged style, balls over the top to maximise the strengths of Ivan Toney. Yet one of Frank’s biggest assets is his ability to adapt, to mix things up. So in more recent seasons we have pressed from the front but, when the occasion has required it, also sat back and waited for our chance to counterattack. What has always remained, though, is hard work right across the team. That comes from the manager.
Belief is another of Frank’s strengths. He puts trust in his players and they repay him with performances on the pitch. For instance, when Toney was not named in the England squad for the last World Cup in Qatar, the very next game he scored a brace against Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium toearn us a much-deserved win. The conversations around the importance of Toney to us and not England, instigated by Frank, would no doubt have been key to ensuring there was fire in the striker’s belly.
And when Toney left for Saudi Arabia last summer,the Brazilian Igor Thiago came in as his replacement. But he got injured in pre-season so someone else was required to fill the No 9 role. Up stepped Yoane Wissa with 19 goals, his best league return, alongside tributes to the love and support Frank had shown him in the buildup to the campaign. It was, from Wissa, a clear testament to the very human qualities of the man in charge.
A manager’s lifespan is now around two years. We were never meant to have almost seven with Frank. So what was intended to be a short-term relationship with no strings attached became long term and meaningful. It is also now at an end. We were not ready to say goodbye, not with so much still to be achieved.
It will also take some time getting used to not seeing Frank in the home dugout, and it will be even stranger to see him in that of another team. Take care of him, Tottenham – and thanks for the memories, Thomas.
Natalie Sawyer is a broadcaster and lifelong Brentford supporter.