There's little more character-building than getting stick from more than 1,500 Millwall fans – but it's water off a duck's back to Dan Bentley.
The Bees keeper was targeted by the Lions fans behind his goal in the second half of Brentford's 1-0 win on Saturday, but had the last laugh by saving Lee Gregory's penalty in front of them.
For Bentley, born in the Basildon heartland of Millwall's big rivals West Ham, having your name taken in vain, within certain parameters, is all part of the game.
“With them, you know you're going to get that,” he said. “They're going to be on your case and looking for every detail they can get at you, which is all part and parcel of football. I don't mind that as long as it's all in good faith, I'm not opposed to that at all.
“It was a game for men, for sure. Whenever you play Millwall it's a game for men, no time for little boys. You know what you're going to get – Neil Harris was a good honest player and he's a good honest manager.
“You know his teams are never going to give you an inch in terms of professionalism and the way they work, so going into the game we knew it was going to be tough and they were going to try to come at us, upset us and knock us off our game plan.
“Second half they managed to do that, and we went went astray from the basics a little bit. We were sloppy in possession and gave the ball away too much, and probably could have done with cooler heads as a group. Then we would have got over the line a bit easier than we did in the end.”
As for the penalty itself, Bentley was always confident he was going to save it due to the homework he and the goalkeeping coaches do on the subject.
“I won't give away too much, but we do a lot of work on looking at what various strikers like to do, which hopefully gives you an advantage straight away,” he added.
“But I always feel confident facing a penalty anyway and always feel I can save them. If you face them down with a positive frame of mind, it's another advantage you have.”
