Manager Dean Smith has revealed he made sweeping changes to his Brentford side yesterday in an attempt to inject more energy into it.
Josh McEachran, John Swift, Sam Saunders and Lasse Vibe were all dropped for the trip to Sheffield Wednesday , with Nico Yennaris, Konstantin Kerschbaumer, Sergi Canos and Philipp Hofmann coming onto the side.
The changes had Bees fans scratching their heads and speculating that perhaps, with the club unlikely to either go up or down, Smith was experimenting with one eye on the future.
He said: “I wanted to freshen things up. I played 60-odd games here and I know how big that pitch is. I felt we needed legs in midfield today, and I thought Nico Yennaris was excelllent. He came off feeling his foot a bit but he gave us legs and energy in midfield, which I think we needed.
“I've got the likes of Josh McEachran and John Swift who are good technical players, but we've lacked a bit in the transition when we lose the ball. We've not had the legs to recover, but I felt we had that today, we had a good balance.
“I also feel that we need Alan Judge higher up the pitch at the moment. I felt if we played Hoff up there, with their two centre halves playing quite deep, it would give Judgy the opportunity to play off him and get him into positions where he's running at centre halves, which they don't like.”
However, Smith's plans were laid to waste just five minutes into the game when Yoann Barbet was sent off , forcing him into a reshuffle which saw Kerschbaumer hooked so Jack O'Connell could come on in defence.
He said: “I had to apologise to Kersch, it's not nice to have to bring someone off like that. He's not started a game for a while, and after seven minutes we had to make a change because of something beyond our control.
“For us, the future is the next game. We were just looking at this game, and we felt that team could hurt Sheffield Wednesday today. Unfortunately that decision was taken out of our hands.
“We came with a game plan. We knew their front four would be a handful, but we felt we could get at them too, and I think the first five minutes showed that.
“We started the game very well and had two very good chances. Nico has gone through and probably had more time than he realised, then Judgey forced the keeper into a good save. We started the game on the front foot, but the game hinged on the sending off.”
