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BRENTFORD VS WOLVES – COMING TO A CINEMA SCREEN NEAR YOU


By Tim Spiers
Jan 23, 2022

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

They’ll make a Brentford vs Wolves film one day. Steven Spielberg’s only
quandary is which genre to pick.

Will it be spy thriller Brentford Under Attack, the gripping story of how covert
surveillance techniques caused a match of association football to be halted for
21 minutes?

Or mushy tearjerker Adios Adama, the gooey account of a glistening, toned Adonis
breaking hearts and bidding an emotional farewell with a goodbye gift of a goal…
only for *spoiler alert* a cruel twist of technological fate to deny him his
sobbing swansong?

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Maybe revenge sequel Capital Requital, which tells the tale of how Wolves
deviously turned the tables on their London hosts, adopting the same
time-wasting tactics that had been utilised against them in defeat some months
earlier?

Perhaps a slapstick spoof remake of The NeverEnding Story, the tale of one man’s
hilarious inability to complete a football match? He takes the players off, he
brings them back on, his equipment haplessly fails, he dishes out red cards,
it’s… The (Peter) Bankes Job.

No football match can be truly unique, they’ll tell you. As a witness to
Brentford 1-2 Wolves, this The Athletic writer is here to report that the events
of the afternoon of January 22, 2022 have never occurred before and will never
take place again.

3pm

Fabio Silva kicks off. Nothing untoward there.

3.17pm

The fun starts. Jose Sa screams as he goes to ground because someone has stood
on his toe. It was his team-mate Leander Dendoncker. Wolves have started to
out-Brentford Brentford.

Background context: When Brentford beat Wolves 2-0 at Molineux in September,
Wolves were furious with what they perceived to be chronic time-wasting from
Thomas Frank’s team from the first-half onwards. Frank’s counterpart Bruno Lage
complained about the amount of time the ball was in play during the second half
(it was in play for 50 minutes and 43 seconds during the whole match). Frank
retorted: “You don’t use excuses. Just say you lost to the better team on the
day.”

3.21pm

A horrific clash of heads between Brentford players Mathias Jensen and Rico
Henry leaves both bleeding heavily and unable to continue, with two concussion
substitutes sent on. Play stops for around six minutes.

3.31pm

It starts with a faint buzz in the air. Sort of like if a really big bee was
trying to fly in through your window.

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Fourth official Martin Atkinson points towards the sky… and there it is. A small
drone is circling above the pitch, roughly at the height of the stadium roof.
Referee Bankes immediately stops play and, when the drone doesn’t fly away, it’s
clear that something malicious and deliberate is happening. Bankes has no choice
but to take the players from the field, per Premier League regulations (as the
stadium announcer almost immediately informs everyone, with remarkable
efficiency)

“Who’s the wanker with the drone?” the Brentford supporters enquire.

The drone buzzes around for a few minutes, then heads west (not towards north
London and the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, which rules out the theory it’s
Antonio Conte keeping an eye on Adama Traore). Security personnel make phone
calls, fans go for a brew or a pint, the players try to stay loose in the
dressing rooms. It’s pretty unprecedented.

“We needed to wait,” Lage says later. “If we come back and the drone appears
again, we start and stop, start and stop. So we waited, that was the message:
Try and find the person responsible.”

“The ref, the staff, they did a great job, because it was for our security to go
to the dressing room,” Wolves midfielder Joao Moutinho adds. “It’s not good for
the game, of course. We tried to focus.”

3.52pm

The players are back out. They line up to kick off, before Bankes reminds them
it’s Wolves’ ball — Rayan Ait-Nouri was about to take a throw-in when play
stopped. Everyone tries to remember where on the pitch they were standing. The
game is already into stoppage time and there’ll be 19 minutes of it.

4.11pm

It’s finally half-time. On overseas broadcasts, the TV clock is showing 71
minutes.

“It was a strange first half,” Lage states, possibly before adding about the
surface of the Sun: “Well, it’s quite warm, really.”

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In the dressing room, he tells his players they need to match Brentford’s energy
levels and play with personality and with ambition. They’ve been inhibited in
the first half, he wants them to drive through Brentford’s midfield, put them on
the back foot and exploit pockets of space in and around the penalty area.

4.23pm

The players are out early for the second half — given they’ve already had a
prolonged break there’s no need for a long half-time. Except, hang on, Bankes is
putting his hand up his sleeve which, as Wolves fans know from the game against
Brighton, only means one thing: technology failure.

And Bankes heads back down the tunnel! Once again, football cannot be played.

Match Of The Day starts in a minute, pal. Get this game started, for the love of
God.

“We want our money back,” sings the away end. Frank asks Lage if he wants to be
referee.

4.31pm

Bankes receives the biggest ovation he’ll ever get in his career as he finally
re-emerges from the tunnel. He smiles, before being swiftly brought back to
reality with a repeated chant of “Wanker”.

4.35pm

Moutinho doesn’t really do more than one goal in a season (he’s scored once in
each of his first three campaigns for the club) but bends a gorgeous
outside-of-the-boot curler into the corner for his second of 2021-22.

Nelson Semedo doesn’t really do assists (none this season before Saturday) but
he sets it up via a smart one-two.




Joao Moutinho scores a wonderful goal to put Wolves 1-0 up against Brentford
(Photo: Jacques Feeney/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)



4.40pm

A helicopter now hovers menacingly above the stadium as the uncertainty over an
imminent attack grows. Turns out it’s the police.

4.54pm

Toti Gomes, in his second Premier League appearance, is sent off for a late
lunge on Kristoffer Ajer. But wait, replays show he just connects with Ajer’s
toe. Bankes is off to his TV monitor…and the red card is overturned.

4.56pm

Wolves concede their first set-piece goal (other than penalties, or James
Ward-Prowse’s worldie free-kick) of the whole season (they let in 13 via this
method last year) when Ivan Toney is inexplicably left all on his own to volley
home.

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5pm

Sa catches a corner, runs to the edge of his box to try to clear quickly and
barges Toney, literally like a raging bull, to the floor.

5.03pm

Moutinho doesn’t really do assists (none this season) but tees up Ruben Neves,
who doesn’t really do goals that don’t involve a wicked deflection (none this
season) but curls one into the corner.




Ruben Neves celebrates scoring what turned out to be the winner for Wolves in
Saturday’s crazy match (Photo: Jack Thomas – WWFC/Wolves via Getty Images)



5.12pm

It’s tense. Very tense. Wolves have been struggling to cope with Brentford’s
long throws and set pieces all afternoon and now they’re really on the ropes.

5.16pm

Sa is booked for time-wasting as the board goes up to show seven minutes of
stoppage time. Sure, why not? Frank has started pointing to his watch. Wolves
captain Conor Coady comes across and politely enquires of fourth official
Atkinson: “Seven fucking minutes? Seriously?”

5.21pm

Substitute Traore scores. After last week’s goal against Sheffield United in the
FA Cup, it seems he’s finally learned how to finish in the month that he’s
extremely likely to be sold. Oh, the irony.

It’s a beauty as well, a composed and controlled finish (we’ve only been waiting
four years) into the corner. He heads straight for the away dugout, Lage is out
to greet him, his team-mates all join in for a cuddle. Beaming smiles all round.
It’s a textbook goodbye goal.

5.23pm

Oh wait, it’s offside. No goal.

5.24pm

This 90-minute game, which started two hours and 24 minutes ago, finishes.

5.25pm

There’s a post-match brawl. Of course there is. Wolves have riled Brentford with
a lot of shithousery. Frank gets involved, there’s a confrontation with
Moutinho. Bankes showed the Brentford manager a yellow card. “You can give me
the second one as well,” he says. Bankes gives him the second one.

Apart from all that, it was pretty uneventful.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wolves somehow lost their first three league matches of 2021-22 by a goal to
nil. Since then, they’ve played 18 further league matches and won 10 of them,
earning 34 points. The table from September 1 onwards places them in fifth, six
points behind Chelsea in third but having played three games fewer than the
reigning European champions. Essentially, Champions League form.

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They haven’t conceded in the first half of any of their past 14 league games.
They’ve just won their first three league matches of a calendar year for the
first time since 1994.

First-year manager Lage, who continues to show his tactical flexibility, is
building something. He’s doing so on a foundation of one of Europe’s best
defensive records. Now Wolves are starting to score goals too (eight in their
past three fixtures, if you include the FA Cup).

And here, in west London, they showed the character and personality he’s been
calling for to win when not at their best. Victories like this can characterise
a season.

But after a drone stopped play, a long stoppage for two serious head injuries,
failed refereeing technology, an overturned red card, three goals, another one
disallowed via VAR, a post-match brawl, a red card for a manager and stoppages
totalling more than 35 minutes, just don’t ask for an explanation as to how it
happened.

Brentford vs Wolves — coming to a cinema screen near you.

(Top photo: Juan Gasparini/MI News/NurPhoto via Getty Images)




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