Romaine Sawyers has lauded the character of this season's Brentford side after two contrasting performances.

The Bees showed their attacking verve in the 3-2 win over Preston on Saturday, while they had to grind out a 2-0 victory at Birmingham on Wednesday night.

While the styles may have been different, there was one key similarity and that was the character displayed by the west Londoners.

They had to deal with seeing a lead slip twice at Deepdale, while Nico Yennaris was knocked out, and then out-battle a Birmingham side who signed three Bees players in Harlee Dean, Jota and Maxime Colin in August.

Sawyers reflected: “We've shown a different side of our game. It showed the maturity in the group.

“After the Preston game a few of the boys said we showed a lot more character than last year and we showed character at St Andrews.

“We knew we had to bide our time and be patient. They showed us respect. It was a good professional performance.”

Romaine Sawyers

He added: “Character comes with playing together more often. We're demanding more of ourselves on and off the pitch.

“It's a tight-knit group and I think it shows. Nobody holds a grudge. You can tell people do this and do that.

“When you do something wrong, Everyone is there to support you. We don't do it maliciously when we're saying what we demand and it's showing.”

It was clear that the 760 Brentford fans that made the trip to St Andrews were desperate to see a Bees win, especially after the summer's events and Sawyers paid tribute to them.

He added: “I think the fans made their opinion vocal from the start of the game but we had a job to do.

“It wasn't the cleanest performance but we fought and battled right. We showed glimpses of our quality and it was a professional away win.”

Brentford have now gone eight games unbeaten and face a Leeds side that haven't yet clicked and Sawyers is confident ahead of the meeting.

“We believe we can beat anyone. We've got to make Griffin Park a fortress. We're now unbeaten in eight and moving in the right direction,” he said.

“At the start of the season where we weren't picking up the points, we've always said we had the belief and we're now turning it into three points.”