Southampton 1 Brentford 1

Bees still unbeaten with deserved draw

Brentford maintained their unbeaten run to the season with a deserved draw in an exciting game full of chances for both sides.

James Wilson replacing the injured captain Alan Bennett saw the only change in the Bees line up.

Brentford had a chance in the first 20 seconds with a shot straight at the keeper, no, hold on, that's Southampton in the red and white stripes! After much confusion amongst some of the Bees fans we finally got our heads round the fact that were weren't playing in our usual stripes.

The first half saw chances for both sides - often blocked or going just wide or too weak to trouble the keeper too much. Exciting stuff with good play up and down the pitch. One ball into the bees six-yard box gave Ryan Dickson a problem to solve. Does he head the ball across goal and out for a corner? Does he mess it up and score an own goal? No, he heads the ball against the post for the Bees to clear it. Class! Sam Wood came closest for the bees when hitting the post and Sam Saunders overhead/bicycle/scissors kick went just wide.

The bees started the second half well too but as the half wore on Southampton's subs began making an impact and took control of the game for about ten minutes leading to a Saints goal on 73 minutes. Harding smashing the ball home from a clever Lambert header.

It was then the Bees turn to make their impact subs with Kabba replacing Weston and Cleveland Taylor on for Saunders. This paid off after a lung-bursting run from his own half from Ryan Dickson who powered through what seemed like the entire Southampton team and their subs before putting in a great far post cross for Taylor to dive majestically and place it beyond the keeper.

2,500 Bees fans made it clear that Southampton were neither famous anymore nor very good and that they may just be going down with Wycombe.

Both teams tried to win the game after that but Southampton came closest with a powerful shot heading for the corner of the net in the fourth minute of time added on, only for Price to leap across his goal, salmon-like, and put the ball behind.

On the whole a good day out, lots of fun, good performance and a deserved point.

The only caveat this reporter has is that we are giving away too many chances. We can't rely on teams being a bit rubbish in front of goal like Norwich and Southampton were and expect to get away with it every week. It's nice that we are keen ourselves to take the initiative and bomb forward with lots of good wing play but that will likely come back to bites us one day. Still, if we keep getting results the occasional 6-5 defeat won't be too bad!

Oh yeah, we seem to have two very good goalkeepers!

Thanks to Beefeater and beesotted for the match report

August 24, 2009