John Egan can see no reason why Brentford can't mount a promotion challenge over the course of the season.

The Bees have, so far, kept hold of their best players and added quality in areas where they needed to strengthen.

And confidence is high in the camp that the west Londoners can have a special season.

Egan said: “I really don’t see why not. We have quality players all over the park. We’ve shown we can compete with anyone last year and this season the squad is even stronger. I don’t see any reason why we can’t be up there.”

“The whole club wants to get promoted, and I’m no different. We want to push on and get to the next level.

John Egan

“We need to do that by improving on our top 10 finish and pushing for the play-offs. If we can get a bit of momentum we’ll see where it takes us.

“We’re raring to go for Sheffield United and we’re really ready for it.”

If the table was drawn up on budget Brentford wouldn’t be in the top six, and possibly not even the top 20, but Egan believes the Bees have proven how good a side they are.

He added: “I think we showed last year. We played against a lot of good sides and you saw what we produced.

“We lost away from home against the three teams who got relegated and that shows that maybe we were inconsistent on the road.

“This year we’re all singing from the same hymn sheet and we have a lot of good players. We have to believe in ourselves.

John Egan

“I believe in us – and if you don’t have that there’s no point in even competing. We feel like we have a good team and a great morale in the squad.

“We’ve had a year in the Championship now and finished top 10, now we need to push on and get in the play-offs.”

Despite the optimism at Griffin Park, this season's Championship appears to be the most open for some time and there are as many as 12 clubs who could claim to have a genuine chance at promotion.

Egan explained: “There are threats all over the division, as you’ve seen last season when not many people expected Huddersfield to be in the mix but they ended up getting promoted.

Huddersfield claimed play-off glory

“In the Championship you can never call it – it’s probably the most open league in the world. There are a lot of teams fighting to get to promoted and a lot of teams fancying themselves to do it.

“Every game you go out and play is a tough one. There are threats all over the division.”

Fulham are one of those sides expected to do well and Egan felt the Whites and Newcastle were the best two sides Brentford faced.

He added: “I fancied Fulham to go up through the play-offs – when we played them they were probably up there – I’d say them and Newcastle were the two best teams we played.

“Obviously Brighton went up as well but Fulham of the ones who didn’t go up impressed me the most.”