Brentford Head Coach Dean Smith said that Middlesbrough’s recent run of victories over The Bees does not concern him as he prepares to take on Aitor Karanka’s side for the first time as Brentford boss.

The Bees have lost their last eight encounters with Boro, five of those defeats coming in the last 16 months, but Dean said that run means little to him as he prepares to host the league leaders at Griffin Park tomorrow night.

“I am really looking forward to the game,” said Dean. “I know that people are talking around the place that they seem to be a bit of a bogey team but they are only a bogey team to the players and staff who have played them before, I am not one of them. There are a lot of the players who aren’t them as well so we are all looking forward to the challenge. We feel that we can go and give a good account of ourselves and certainly compete with them.

“Middlesbrough have quality in abundance and are very organised. With that quality and organisation they can score good goals but you only have to look at their defensive record to see that organisation is keeping other teams at bay as well. There are chinks of light for us and chinks of light in their armour as well that we have looked at, analysed and have been working on. Hopefully we can put that into fruition on Tuesday night.”

Brentford go into the match on the back of a 1-0 defeat to Sky Bet League One side Walsall in the Third Round of the FA Cup on Saturday but Dean feels he saw enough in the second-half of that match to give him confidence ahead of the Teesiders’ visit.

“We will prepare as we would for any game,” said Dean. “We prepared right for the Walsall game but it wasn’t right in the first-half. I looked at it and I probably got the mix of the team wrong. We were poor first-half, there is no denying that. We made one change at half-time and were then much the better team and deserved something out of it. I am still getting to know the players and we didn’t get the individual performances that we needed to get the collective result.

“We will treat each game as it comes but the number of games in a short space of time is very difficult. Although we got beaten on Saturday hopefully our second-half performance has given us the confidence to go into tomorrow and Friday and get maximum points.”

The Bees are currently in the middle of a run of three home games in six days but Dean has no concerns about the players’ recovery thanks to the work of Brentford’s Sports Science and Medical departments.

“The biggest change in modern football is the recovery of players, it is so important,” said Dean. The recovery is a lot better and a lot more important. I have come here, seen what the medical staff and the sports science staff can do, and it has really impressed me. We can turn players round really quickly.”

Bees Player subscribers can listen to the full interview with Dean below