Brentford FC- The Stuff Of Dreams

After 74 years, welcome back to top-flight soccer, eh?

LONDON — This is the stuff dreams are made of, as Brentford beat Arsenal 2-0 to celebrate their first-ever Premier League game with a famous win on the opening day of the 2021-22 season.

The Bees, playing in their first top-flight game since 1947, were buzzing from start to finish and totally unsettled Premier League giants Arsenal, who never truly got going.

Sergi Canos slammed home in the first half and Christian Norgaard headed home in the second as an understrength Gunners could not cope with the tempo of the Premier League new boys and Mikel Arteta looked dejected on the sidelines.

Brentford will spend their first day as a Premier League club atop the table. How about that for a start to the new season?

(Full disclosure: I’m a Spurs supporter, so my joy in seeing Arsenal lose ignominiously is genuine and heartfelt. It also won’t color my views in this essay. I promise. Of course, if you’re buying that, I also have a bridge in Arizona I’d like to sell you.)

One of the things I love about professional soccer is relegation. In most leagues, the bottom three get demoted to the league directly below them. Then, the top three teams in that league get promoted to the league above them. Of course, there are some minor differences from country to country (Here in America, Major League Soccer doesn’t have relegation), but the theory remains the same.

Relegation creates gripping drama at the bottom of a league table, where you’d otherwise have sad-sack sides impotently playing out the string. Clubs hovering near the bottom will pull out the stops to avoid finishing in the bottom three. For example, in the English Premier League, there’s a HUGE difference between finishing 17th and 18th. That difference can mean millions of dollars. Finish 17th, and you absolutely had an awful season, but the good news is that you’re hanging around to fight another season.

Finish 18th (or 19th or 20th), and you’re dropping into the Championship, England’s second tier, for the following season. The biggest difference is you’re going to have far less money coming in the door, which will impact every aspect of your club’s operations. The television contract for the Championship is a fraction of the vast sum enjoyed by the Premier League. Less TV money means less money for player contracts. The players who don’t want to play on second-tier sides (and for second-tier salaries) will be those you try to sell or allow to leave without compensation.

You can’t charge first-tier prices for second-tier competition, so ticket prices will have to be reduced. It’s a ripple effect that resonates through every aspect of a football club’s operation. Before long, club staff must be pared back, which means layoffs. In addition, facilities become more difficult to maintain given budget constraints.

(Netflix did an excellent series on Sunderland AFC as they were demoted from the Premier League and the Championship in successive seasons. The impact on the club, its bottom line, and its fan base was brutal.)

Then there are the on-field struggles, which revolve primarily around a club working to return to the league from which they were dropped. If you’re an English side that isn’t one of the 20 clubs in the Premier League, you want to be somewhere else. You can’t get there unless you adjust to your new reality and adapt to diminished circumstances. You must compete for the privilege to move into the top three in your new home- the Championship- and thus book your passage to bigger paydays.

It’s a dog-eat-dog world, and few clubs are more familiar with the associated heartbreaks and near-misses than Brentford FC.

There are 92 teams in the four tiers of the English Football League- Premier League, Championship, League One, and League Two. Brentford FC has spent the past 74 years toiling in what Americans might refer to as the “minor leagues.” The end of the 2020-21 season found the Bees finishing third in the Championship after defeating Swansea FC in a playoff.

Today was Brentford FC’s first top-flight appearance since 1947. There was at least one fan- an 88-year-old man- who was at that match AND in the stands for the Bees’ return to England’s first division.

It was truly storybook stuff. In this case, the story was David vs. Goliath. Brentford was at home against mighty Arsenal FC, a club that has won more silverware than Bees fans have ever dreamed of. The Gunners are one of the wealthiest clubs in the world. They enjoy a worldwide fan base, play in European competitions, and are held to impossibly high standards. For Arsenal FC, it’s not about staying in the Premier League. It’s about WINNING the league. Anything less is considered a disappointment by pundits and Gunners fans.

Arsenal’s player salary budget is larger than Brentford FC’s by several orders of magnitude. The Gunners’ home pitch, Emirates Stadium, seats 60,704. The Bees’ new home, Brentford Community Stadium, has a listed capacity of 17,250. Yes, EVERYTHING about Brentford FC is smaller than Arsenal FC. And yet, the Bees somehow found a way to defeat Arsenal 2-0…and look absolutely dominant in doing so.

How can you not love Brentford? In their first top-flight game since 1947, the Bees were rampant and their fans roared them on to victory as the first-ever full capacity crowd at their new stadium was treated to an historic occasion. Canos’ fine strike to put them ahead sent the Brentford fans wild. Norgaard’s goal was celebrated wildly too. From their Moneyball approach to scouting players, strong community ties and just being very different to most clubs, they will be everyone’s favorite second team this season.

Brentford are an extremely fun addition to the Premier League and their new stadium, nestled in-between roaring motorways in west London, is a little gem. The atmosphere was electric and intimidating for opposition players, with the Bees faithful so close to the pitch. 16,479 fans sounded like 167,490. Maybe that was just because this was their first PL game or the first PL game in front of a full stadium for 18 months. Whatever the reason, it was an incredible, historic moment. What a win. What a story.

Brentford’s relatively unknown Danish manager, Thomas Frank, had promised Bees supporters that his players would run themselves into the ground for them if they showed up. True to his word, Brentford’s players outran, outworked, and thoroughly embarrassed an Arsenal side favored to finish in the Premier League’s top five. The Gunners looked like a disorganized League One side playing out the string for much of the match.

Of course, no one should be getting ahead of themselves. This is Match Week One of a 38-match season…and that doesn’t include various cup competitions. There’s a long way to go until the season ends in late May, and the odds against Brentford FC finishing anywhere but the bottom three are long.

Injuries, lack of depth, and a lack of financial resources may yet come back to bite the Bees, particularly during the January transfer window, when clubs try to plug holes in their rosters. It’s been generally shown that staying up in the Premier League requires securing at least 40 points. Brentford FC currently has three…but it’s three more than they had before stepping onto the pitch to face Arsenal FC.

For one night in August, Bees supporters were able to enjoy a magical evening. Finally, after 74 years of wandering in England’s football wilderness, they played- and won- a Premier League game. The 88-year-old man (who was 14 at the Bees’ last top-flight match) said it was the best night of his life.

If you love soccer, it doesn’t get much better than the last few seconds waiting for the final whistle at Brentford Community Stadium. The stadium may accommodate 17,250, but years from now, many multiples of that will claim to have been in the stands to watch the lads run the Gunners off the pitch.

For not quite 24 hours, Brentford FC will sit alone atop the Premier League table. Who knows where they’ll be at Christmas or at the end of May, but Bees supporters deserve to celebrate while they can. Their match against Arsenal FC is not the only David vs. Goliath story they’ll face this season. It’s the first of many.

Of course, success for Brentford FC this season will be measured far differently than it will be for Arsenal, Manchester City, Chelsea, or Tottenham. All the Bees have to do is find a way to find 17th or better to ensure they remain in the Premier League. Anything else will be a bonus…as if playing top-flight soccer for the first time in 74 years is anything BUT a bonus.

Brentford FC is why I love soccer. Yes, I’ve long loved the game and the surpassing skill and athleticism displayed at the game’s highest levels. But it’s the little guy versus the world stories that fuel my passion for soccer. Relegation helps make those stories possible. Sadly, it also creates tremendous heartache and disappointment for supporters of once-great clubs with little chance of returning to their former glory. For every Brentford FC, there’s a Sunderland, Ipswich Town, Milwall, Middlesborough, or Queens Park Rangers…and many, many more. The list of once-great clubs living off past glory is long, and it grows with each passing year.

Everyone associated with Brentford FC will quickly learn that getting to the Premier League was the “easy” part. However, staying there will prove to be a significant, perhaps even impossible, challenge. Even if they succeed this season, there’s next season and the season after that and….

It never gets any easier or less challenging. In fact, as time goes by, Brentford FC’s management may find that merely staying up will no longer be sufficient. If the Bees can prove that they belong in the Premier League, their supporters may at some point begin expecting trophies and finishing high enough to qualify for European competitions. Thus, success will, in time, only beget more and greater expectations.

There will be plenty of time for those paid to worry about such things to do that. For at least a few days, they can enjoy being undefeated and on top of the table. Then they get to begin preparations for their match against Crystal Palace.

And so it begins.