After a depressing trip last season to the west country hell hole that is Swindon, I am not too sad to report that I am unable to make the same trip for Brentford’s match against the Robins this weekend.

While the Bees are battling it out to get our season up and running I will be sitting in a field at a music festival in north Wales. The weather forecast is for rain, rain and then a little more rain.

A weekend of mud-caked misery seems certain to ensue, but if Brentford contrive to make the same kind of disastrous defensive mistakes they made against Walsall last Saturday in the Swindon game then contracting trench foot instead of having to sit through another 90 minutes of football-induced frustation might not seem like such a bad option after all.

To call the two goals we gifted a distinctly average Walsall side schoolboy errors would be an insult to the spotty faced, short-trouser wearing urchins who are currently filling our classrooms and the most annoying thing about it is that, those mistakes apart, it was a game that the Bees controlled and dominated.

However, I am not going to start panicking yet. I saw enough in the games against Cheltenham Town and Walsall to suggest that things will improve, but this optimistic prognosis is obviously heavily reliant on the Bees not gifting goals to our opponents.

The game on Saturday promises to be a tricky one, but Swindon are not the same force they were last season and a spirit-lifting win should be achievable. It would certainly serve as a nice boost ahead of Tuesday night’s cup tie at home to Hull City.

Hull and Brentford are not traditional rivals but the Tigers have given us a couple of reasons to despise them.

The less-than-transparent transfer of Michael Turner from Hull to Sunderland appears to have left the Bees out of pocket.

This righteous ire will be further fuelled by the fact that ginger thug Paul McShane could turn out for Hull.

Bees fans will well remember his dreadful assault on Alex Rhodes in 2005 that put the then promising young winger out of action for almost a year.

Sad to say, Rhodes was never the same again and is currently trying to earn a contract with Ryman League side AFC Sudbury.

McShane, on the other hand, has gone on to coin it as a bog standard Premiership and Championship clogger. Life is not always fair.