Arcticterntalk.org

The blog of a travelling psychiatrist and football lover. Who happens to be a halfway decent photographer. Takes a cynical view of the world

Archive for the tag “brentford”

27 Jan 2013

Brentford 2 Chelsea 2


It has been a long time since I have been so proud of my team. For those not familiar, Brentford are a small West London team averaging crowds of around 6,000. Chelsea are the current European champions. In the 4th round of the FA Cup today they drew 2-2.

A great day was had by all. It all started well by us meeting the Brentford manager Uwe Rosler on the way to the ground and he was kind enough to pose with my family for a photo. A good MCDonalds breakfast, and a great game of football in a packed stadium. 

At no stage of the game were Brentford overawed by Chelsea and in reality came close to knocking Chelsea out. 

A few photos as moments but sadly all I Phone photos and the camera on the phone underwhelms me totally. 

The only negative might be those who thought it clever to let off flares in a packed terrace. ImageImageImage

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
19 Dec 2012

Pay what you want to watch Brentford v Stevenage. 22nd Dec.


Strange but true. Brentford ask a minimum of 1£ only but you can choose what to pay if you buy your ticket beforehand up until 4 pm friday evening. Why are they doing this? Perfect sense. They have around 2000 season ticket holders, who do not begrudge them doing this at all, and will make it up to their season ticket holders later in the season with some offer one suspects. So 2000 have already paid. The expected crowd for a home game the saturday before Xmas is never high, maybe 5000 maximum and possibly lower. Stevenage will not bring armies of fans and most likely will bring around 200-300 only. Folks will not pay 1£, they are likely to choose to pay a median amount of between 5-10£ in my opinion.

So a good PR activity, a good day out. Lets hope this works. A few years ago a home game versus Peterborough was sponsored by a company (maybe St George Homes?), and they essentially made it free to get in. Result, great crowd,great atmosphere and home win! So spread the word and call Brentford to buy your tickets over the phone or online. Lets fill the ground. Already two sides have sold out, so don’t delay.

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
19 Dec 2012

Stuart Dallas. Footballer at Brentford. A League 1 club in West London.


In a few years remember the name Stuart Dallas. A young Northern Irish footballer who joined Brentford last summer. He played ostensibly his debut game tonight in the FA Cup win over Bradford 4-2. He had a great game, good skill, good effort and my humble prediction is that he will go far. You heard it here first!

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
19 Dec 2012

Brentford are better than Arsenal


Football is a strange game. Last week Bradford beat Arsenal and tonight they were playing Brentford in an FA Cup replay at Griffin Park. This is a game that in all honesty no-one really wanted. Brentford thought they were through to the third round as Bradford got expelled for playing an ineligible player. A minor crime but a crime all the same. For reasons that no-one in football understands the FA rolled over and reinstated them .A chilly night in front of a small crowd, with one side of the ground closed. A decent game which Brentford seemed to want to lose. They gave Bradford their opening goal with a bad defensive error, scored through a penalty on the stroke of half-time, then gave away a penalty in extra time ( though what for no-one in the ground knew), but then decided to score 3 goals in under 5 minutes to win the game. Bradford were actually quite poor in defence and if this is the standard at the top of League 2, then I never want to go back there.

Final score 4-2 to Brentford. The prize? A trip to Southend United on Jan 5th that will not be an easy game. So does this mean Brentford are better than Arsenal? Football is a funny game built on confidence and often some luck. This Brentford team might just be getting promoted this season.

The linesman on the far side was Sian Massey and she looked one of the best linesman we have had.

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
10 Nov 2012

Brentford 2 Carlisle 1


This was one of those games that restores faith in professional football. The weather was right for football, cloudy with a sense of rain in the air. Floodlights on in the second half. The ground had almost 7000 in there, a decent crowd considering not so many had made the trip down from Carlisle almost 400 miles away. The Brentford board and directors also did their bit by allowing fans to buy tickets up to 4 pm friday at only 10£.

But this was a great game of football. Carlisle came to play and not just block up one end for 90 minutes. Brentford took the lead in the first half with a nice finish in the box from Jonathon Douglas and then gifted Carlisle an equaliser following a dreadful  defensive error. But Brentford went on to get the winner in the second half and combined with a penalty save by the Brentford keeper Simon Moore about 10 minutes from the end got the 3 points.

So why was this a good game? Well put simply effort and running all game from all 20 outfield players. Great tackles, great saves and decent goals. A few maligned Brentford players had their best games and in fact all 11 might have been man of the match. Great day out, great game this football. And the Cornish Pastie, re-heated I suspect  a snip at 2.50£.

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
04 Nov 2012
1 Comment

Met Police FC Mascot. Definitely the most unusual football mascot in the world


Few photos from today. FA Cup round 1 Met Police v Crawley Town. Great game. Will post tomorrow about that but here is the mascot and we now know his name!! PC SO Steve. This has to be the most unusual mascot in the world. He goes around talking to the children and playing football with them!

 

Sad after losing

Sad Met Police Mascot after losing today v Crawley

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
13 Oct 2012

Carshalton AFC 1 Hastings 0


A first win in the league for Carshalton since Easter monday and well deserved. Things have been a bit chaotic at Carshalton this last few weeks with many senior players departing, the manager changing and only an interim manager in place. So the fact that a young side was even competitive was impressive. There were actually three good goals in this game but according to the linesman, two of them were offside. Good atmosphere and good burger. The other bonus is that this was non-league day and Carshalton did everyone proud by allowing in free of charge anyone with a League club season-ticket or local residents. A moment of amusement when the girl on the turnstile had no idea that such a club as Brentford existed! I had to spell that one out. The person before me was a West Ham season-ticket holder.

Anyway the game was fast-paced and played in good spirit. Nick Hamann the Carshalton keeper was man of the match in my view making some impressive saves, suggesting that he could perform easily at Conference level if not in the league. But carshalton deserved the luck and in fact should have been 3-0 up by half time. This is a club well worth visiting. The fans are friendly and the football always interesting.

 

Carshalton football Club

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
22 Sep 2012

Brentford 1 Oldham Athletic 0.


As usual a personal perspective on a game that I watched. The general feeling was that this game played in nice sunny conditions was quite entertaining. Brentford won the game with a neat goal from our midfielder Adam Forshaw, a young player signed from Everton recently. There were lots of chances, we took one and Oldham took none. So end of that. But four aspects of the game are worthy of scrutiny.

  1. The referee was frankly poor to appalling. Not only did he make any number of poor decisions but failed to talk to the linesmen. Sitting as we do 10 rows back we see things that linesmen must see, they really must. Why do these officials not communicate far more? The gentleman below is not one of the officials today I should add.
  2. Adam Forshaw was the best player on the pitch by a mile. Not only did he score a neat goal, but his passing was premiership quality. Simon Moore in goal will become the best keeper in League 1 and it is difficult to see how Richard Lee will get his place back.
  3. The routine pushing and niggly shoving by oldham reminded me of Division 4 football 30 years ago. They set out to irritiate and destroy any football by foul means and they got away with it. I now have some comprehension as to why their crowds are so low. Would I watch them again? Certainly not. Can I mention that a ticket to this game would cost £22.
  4. At 70 minutes into the game with Brentford winning 1-0, Uwe Rosler took off a striker and replaced him with a full back playing in midfield. So the reality was that we spent 20 minutes in our own half defending a 1-0 lead. Not entertaining. And not right either. Football although a tribal passion should be entertaining and is likely to be more so with two strikers playing in a home game than with one or none.

    Griffin Park

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
11 Aug 2012

Walsall 1 Brentford 0


A truly dissapointing day out. Around 350 Bees fans witnessed a rather tame match and saw Bees beaten by an average Walsall side that are favourites for relegation. The reality was that Brentford played the first half like a reserve team having a pre-season friendly in the sun. Little guile and sadly not so much effort nor skill either. Walsall scored somewhat against the run of play around 20 minutes in and then the result was more or less put to bed by a stupid studs-up challenge from Jake Reeves that deservedly got him red carded. The second half was a  better affair. three Brentford substitutions put a little more spice back into the game but no goals came although Bees went close. Positives from the game? a nice ground to watch football in and decent burger. Simon Moore made some good saves but worried me by his failure to catch much opting to punch almost every time. He also spilled a few shots and had some luck that no passing forward was in reach. Harlee Dean was poor and in fact the whole defence did not give evidence that they will be hard to score against. Kevin O’Connor however maybe man of the match.

This is not a reason to panic but the 350 present will have second thoughts about attending any league cup games next season. Let us hope our first choice team next saturday is better.

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
01 Jun 2012

Darlington Football Club . All football fans should read this story


The story of what has happened to Darlington is so well written that I am not going to even paraphrase anything other than to say it makes sad reading and could apply to any football club. just click the link

http://www.darlofc.co.uk/news.php?NewsID=923

 

My own photos of Darlington are all on my website

http://www.footballgroundz.co.uk

 

Posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Post Navigation

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →