Brentford maintained their superb recent form with a confident 3–0 victory over Sunderland at the Gtech Community Stadium on Wednesday night - and Vitaly Janelt’s assist streak continued.

The German midfielder has had to bide his time for starts this season, but his trademark quality and consistency have seen him play every minute of Brentford's last six games.

After running the show and supplying two assists in the 4–2 win at Everton last weekend, Janelt was at the heart of an outstanding victory over Regis Le Bris’ high-flyers, which saw the Bees climb to fifth in the Premier League.

Now only behind Arsenal and both Manchester clubs in the goals charts, Brentford have scored 35 goals this season - at an average of 1.7 per game.

Brazilian centre-forward Igor Thiago has been the Bees’ attacking spearhead, with the no.9 bagging goals either side of the break against the Black Cats to take his tally to 16 Premier League goals this term. Youngster Yehor Yarmoliuk then sealed a fabulous win with his first goal for the club, blasting home from close range after Mathias Jensen’s corner caused chaos.

An entertaining contest had a bit of everything: Caoimhín Kelleher saving an attempted Panenka penalty from Enzo Le Fée, as well as Brentford hitting the woodwork on four occasions. And knitting it all together for the Bees was Janelt.

Thiago will rightly receive the plaudits for Brentford’s opener, with the Brazilian coolly rounding Robin Roefs before slotting home, but the goal owed much to Janelt’s sliderule fourth assist of the season. With another goal scored on the break, Brentford are top of UEFA’s top five leagues this season for counter-attacking goals.

That pinpoint through-ball for Thiago was one of 53 accurate passes completed by the former VfL Bochum midfielder. No player on either side completed more successful passes over the course of the game than Janelt, who has now edged ahead of Jordan Henderson, Mikkel Damsgaard and Kevin Schade in the assist stakes for the Bees this season.

Only five players - Rayan Cherki, Bruno Fernandes, Jack Grealish, Mohammed Kudus and Granit Xhaka - have racked up more assists this term than Janelt (four), whose all-round game was exemplary against the Mackems. The precision in his passing and attacking work was also reflected defensively, with the 27-year-old leading the Bees for both tackles and interceptions, registering two of each.

The 2025/26 campaign already marks Janelt’s best return for assists in a Premier League season and, alongside him, Yarmoliuk also enjoyed a landmark moment by scoring his first-ever goal in a Brentford shirt.

The dynamic Ukrainian is now just 10 games shy of a century of senior appearances for the club and further underlined his technical quality by posting the highest pass-completion rate (94 per cent) of any player in the Bees’ starting XI.

Much like their free-scoring centre-forward, the seasons of both Janelt and Yarmoliuk are building impressively.

The challenge now for Brentford - individually and collectively - is to harness the momentum generated by their outstanding start to 2026.