Three goals down after just 34 minutes of Wednesday's 3-1 defeat at Aston Villa at Villa Park, Brentford rallied after the break, but Bees head coach Thomas Frank admitted afterwards “you could see the difference between the two teams”.
The west Londoners will no doubt look to quickly learn lessons and move on from the loss at the hands of Unai Emery's Champions League participants, but one of the clear positives Frank and his backroom staff can take from the game was another impressive display from Danish midfielder Mikkel Damsgaard.
After an injury-plagued start to his career in west London, the 24-year-old has found form and fitness this season and the Dane again featured at the top end of a raft of statistics on Wednesday night.
Damsgaard has been one of the Premier League's most incisive passers this season, and the quality of his distribution was again on show in the Midlands with Nathan Collins (46) the only player from either side to complete more accurate passes than the midfielder (43), who took more touches (75) than any player on show at Villa Park.
The former Sampdoria man has allied quality on the ball with an impressive work-rate out of possession and last night Damsgaard won a whopping eight tackles, twice as many as any other player on the pitch, and 12 duels in total.
Bryan Mbeumo and Damsgaard topped the key pass stat category among Brentford players with two apiece, and the Dane's overall contribution was impressive despite the Bees falling to a defeat.
From a Brentford perspective, the biggest highlight of the game was Damsgaard's 54th-minute goal. Picking up a half-cleared Mbeumo cross on the corner of the six-yard box, the midfielder still had work to do, but a lovely feint bought him a yard and a crashing shot flew past Villa’s two-time Goalkeeper of the Year Emiliano Martínez.
Now with three goals and five assists to his name in 2024/25, Damsgaard is out on his own as Brentford's third-most productive player in the Premier League this season behind only Mbeumo and Yoane Wissa (8 goals and an assist each), and the Denmark international has been involved in over a quarter (26 per cent) of the Bees' top-flight goals this term.
One of seven Brentford players to feature in all 14 of the club's league fixtures so far this season, Damsgaard's emergence as a key man has been thrilling to watch and the Bees will hope he can take his form into this weekend's clash against a Newcastle side that held leaders Liverpool to a 3-3 draw at St James' Park on Wednesday.