Brentford Boss: We’re Ready For Arsenal’s Set-Pieces

By The Editor
on 31st December 2024

Thomas Frank expecting aerial bombardment…

Brentford boss Thomas Frank is expecting an aerial assault when his team play Arsenal on New Year’s Day as Mikel Arteta’s men aim to cut the gap at the top of the Premier League.

We’ve scored more goals from set-pieces than any other team in the league since the start of last season, though none of those goals came against the West London side.

Ironically, infamous set-piece coach Nicolas Jover started his career in England at Brentford before being recruited by Arteta and Pep Guardiola at Manchester City.

Brentford are traditionally strong from dead-ball situations and it will be interesting to see the line-up Arteta goes with for in a London derby away from home.

Myles Lewis-Skelly and Jurrien Timber have been playing well at full-back, but it wouldn’t be surprising to see Riccardo Calafiori and Thomas Partey come in to beef up the side.

“Arsenal is the best set-piece team not only in the Premier League but in the world right now,” the Danish coach said in his pre-match press conference.

“They are so aggressive and they are well-coached – but we are also good at set-pieces and we will be ready.

“We are good at defending corners. As far as I know, we have only conceded from one corner so far – which was a short corner against Bournemouth – in the Premier League this season.

“We defend very well so we trust our own processes but, of course, with huge respect to Arsenal and what they can come with.”

Set-pieces are obviously crucial to our attacking play, though we did score four goals from open play in our last away game in the Premier League.

The jury is still out on how we’ll cope without Bukayo Saka after a narrow home win against Ipswich and the eery feeling is that we can only remedy that loss in the transfer window.

Hopefully, the decision-makers at the club can see that and we don’t need a catastrophic result to force them into action.