A night to forget

Perhaps he was expressing his disillusionment with man’s capacity for inflicting suffering upon his fellow man, or maybe he was simply voicing the regret he felt for his own indiscretions.

Of course, the third option is that at the moment that death became him he was overwhelmed by an awful premonition about how appalling the match between Brentford and Bournemouth on November 2, 2010, was going to be.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it really was that bad.

Throughout the game the Brentford team seemed to be locked in a titanic struggle to see who could boot the ball highest in the air (Leon Legge won by a whisker, I’d say).

The poor old ball got hoofed forward more often than the phrase, “what I like about you is, you’re different,” is bandied about on The X Factor.

Another worrying sign was that the Brentford players all seemed to have lost the ability to stand upright.

I lost count of the number of times different Bees players slipped on the turf during the course of the 90 minutes and a rumour is now sweeping the internet that these pratfalls had been carefully choreographed by the team in a tribute to Albania’s favourite son, the recently departed Norman Wisdom.

Apparently Sam Wood is a huge fan of Wisdom’s seminal 1953 film, Trouble in Store, and organised this slapstick homage to his hero (is this true? - Ed).

Andy Scott suggested that this was a game too far for the players, who have had plenty of fixtures to contend with, including the epic match against Birmingham City, over the past few weeks.

To some extent that is a mitigating circumstance and it is true that results have picked up recently, but you must be more one-eyed than Nelson if you think Brentford are anywhere close to being the finished article at the moment.

There is still plenty more work that needs to be done before the Bees can even think about making a serious impression on League One this season.

The one saving grace for us is that, compared to last term, there has been a marked drop in the overall quality of the division and, as a result, all of the teams in the league, barring leaders Brighton, are tightly bunched.

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