Brentford face Tottenham Hotspur away from home in the Premier League on Saturday afternoon (3pm kick-off GMT).
The Bees will be looking to bounce back from a 2-0 loss against Arsenal at Emirates Stadium on Wednesday night, while Spurs drew 2-2 at Newcastle United in midweek.
Analysis, team news, match officials and more. Here's everything you need to know ahead of the fixture.
Pre-match Analysis
Stephen Gillett, Playmaker Stats: Spurs struggling for consistency
Thomas Frank’s Tottenham welcome his former club Brentford to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium this weekend, and it may prove difficult for Keith Andrews to get a firm read on Spurs given their uneven performances this season.
After seven era-defining years at Brentford, Frank crossed the capital in the summer, and his early spell at Spurs has produced eight wins, seven draws and seven losses in all competitions - a spread that reflects a team still searching for rhythm.
Tuesday’s 2–2 draw at Newcastle captured the mood of Frank’s maiden campaign: flashes of quality and resilience wrapped in inconsistency.
Tottenham twice came from behind at St James’ Park, showing genuine mettle, with rugged centre-half Cristian Romero emerging as a surprising hero. The Argentine scored both goals, his acrobatic overhead kick salvaging a point in stoppage-time.
Romero’s bicycle kick established Tottenham (15 goals on the road) as the joint-most prolific away side in the Premier League this season, and also illustrated their knack for netting unlikely goals.
Only four teams - Arsenal, Man City, Chelsea and Brighton - have outscored Spurs in the top flight, yet Frank’s men are punching far above their weight according to the expected goals metric.
The xG numbers reveal that Tottenham have struck 22 Premier League goals (excluding own goals) from just 15.54 xG this term - an over-performance of +6.46 - and Romero’s audacious overhead, bobbling through a sea of bodies, was perhaps the purest illustration of this trend.
Brentford have converted 21 of 147 shots (14.29 per cent) this season, giving them the third-best shot conversion rate in the division. But Tottenham (17.42 per cent) top the Premier League in this respect, despite creating lower-quality chances than the Bees in xG terms.
Remarkably, Spurs have scored nigh on a goal for every two shots on target this term, but they are unlikely to sustain such a high ratio, and Frank will surely want his team to increase the volume of shots they take. Only Burnley (8.2) and Wolves (9.1) have averaged fewer shots per game than Spurs (9.4) so far.
Tottenham’s pressing numbers this term are similarly erratic. According to their passes-per-defensive-action (PPDA) data, only Bournemouth and Arsenal have pressed more intensely than Spurs - yet the north Londoners have managed just four shots from high turnovers this season, a mere five per cent of their upfield regains leading to an attempt on goal.
This disjointedness extends into their defensive work too. Tottenham have logged more miscontrols (252) and been dispossessed on more occasions (148) than any team in the top tier, and they have had the most errors leading to opponents’ shots, with 19.
Brentford, in contrast, have limited any freebies; the Bees have had the fewest lapses of this sort (4) in the division.
Scout report
Dan Long, Sky Sports: Patience needed to turn Tottenham's fortunes around
How best to sum up Tottenham’s 2024/25 season? Strange? Bittersweet? A rollercoaster? One thing is for sure - it was historic, for both positive and negative reasons.
Firstly, it was littered with defeats. There were 26 in all competitions, 22 of which came in the Premier League. The last time they lost that many league games was when they were relegated from the First Division in 1934/35.
It meant they finished just one place above the relegation zone in 17th, which also marked their lowest-ever Premier League finish and their lowest in the top flight since 1966/67, when they finished 22nd in the First Division in 1976/77.
The only saving grace was that Leicester, Ipswich and Southampton won only 12 games between them and slipped back into the Championship without much of a fight.
Ange Postecoglou was under pressure for the whole campaign, with a statement he made after the north London derby defeat to Arsenal on 15 September 2024 relentlessly following him around: “I usually win things in my second season,” he said.
In the league, Spurs faltered, but in the Carabao Cup and Europa League, it was a different story. Those competitions brought a much-needed release. In the former, they reach the semi-finals for the fourth time in seven seasons and in the latter, they beat Manchester United in the final in Bilbao.
Postecoglou no doubt revelled in the ultimate mic-drop moment, delivering Spurs’ first trophy since 2008. The disastrous league form was forgotten about.
But 16 days after that glorious night in Spain, Postecoglou was sacked. “Whilst winning the Europa League this season ranks as one of the club’s greatest moments, we cannot base our decision on emotions aligned to this triumph,” said the club’s statement.
Within a fortnight, the Australian had been replaced by Thomas Frank, who was tempted away from Brentford by a three-year deal in north London. “The time has come for me to move on. But, even as I leave, I know I have left a big piece of my heart at Brentford,” he wrote in a letter to the Bees fans.
It has not been plain sailing for the Dane, though. In his first competitive game, Spurs lost to PSG on penalties in the UEFA Super Cup and, despite three wins from his first four in the league, it is now two wins from the last 10. They are out of the Carabao Cup and have won one of their last four Champions League games.
External pressure is mounting - and was cranked up recently when Frank reacted to fans booing Guglielmo Vicario after a howler against Fulham. “I didn’t like that our fans booed at him straight after and a few times he touched the ball,” he told Sky Sports. “They can’t be true Tottenham fans. That’s unacceptable in my opinion.”
Internally, though, the club seem to still be sure they have the right man at the helm, as Matt Verri alluded to in Hot off the Press. With many players from last season still at the club, surely turning Spurs back into a top-seven club will take time and a touch more patience?
Regardless, a crucial period is upon Spurs. They are five without a league win and, after Brentford’s visit, face Nottingham Forest, Liverpool and Crystal Palace. They host winless Slavia Prague in Europe next Tuesday. This run will test Frank’s mettle.
In the Dugout
Thomas Frank
Thomas Frank was coaching youth players in his native Denmark from his early 20s. He spent time at his hometown club Frederiksvaerk, then Hvidovre, but his career might have ended before he took a job at Copenhagen-based B93.
His future would have lain in teaching, when he agreed with his wife to stop coaching due to money concerns. He was also doing his master's in psychology, working as a coach educator, studying for his A-Licence and bringing up two children, as he told The Telegraph in 2020.
Fortunately, he accepted the B93 role, then moved on to Lyngby and, later, the Danish international set-up where, in 2008, he took on the role of managing both Denmark’s Under-16s and U17s. He took the latter - with a squad that included Christian Nørgaard, Pierre-Emile Højbjerg and Yussuf Poulsen - to the U17 Euros in May 2011, where they reached the semi-finals, and the U17 World Cup the following month.
Frank moved on to the U19s in 2012, then took his first senior job in June 2013 at Brøndby. He took charge of over 100 games before resigning in March 2016. Nine months later, he joined Brentford as an assistant to head coach Dean Smith, before being promoted to head coach in October 2018, when Smith left west London to take over at Aston Villa.
Though he won just one of his first 10 games, over the next seven years, Frank would become one of the club’s most successful managers in history. He took the Bees to the Championship play-off final in his first full season, then delivered promotion to the Premier League in his second. In 2022/23, he guided the club to ninth - their highest top-flight finish since they finished sixth under Harry Curtis in 1937/38.
In June, after over 300 games in charge at Brentford, he signed a three-year deal to replace Ange Postecoglou at Tottenham.
The Gameplan
With Matt Verri, Standard Sport
Standard Sport's Matt Verri discusses how Thomas Frank's side are likely to set up on Saturday afternoon.
He said: "That is a difficult one to predict because I think he has changed the system and he has changed the line-up pretty much every match!
"In general, I think the most common one has been a 4-2-3-1, with at least one of João Palhinha or Rodrigo Bentancur as the defensive midfielders.
"Randal Kolo Muani will probably be starting up front as he has been in really impressive form. Then there is Xavi Simons, who has not started any of the last three Premier League matches. There is a big debate over how much Frank trusts him.
"Whatever system Tottenham play, it will be very direct. They are going to be trying to win set-pieces as much as possible, with a focus on corners and trying to get it wide as much as possible.
"In terms of who the actual personnel will be, that is changing so much from game to game."
Last starting XI v Newcastle United (4-3-3): Vicario; Porro, Danso, Romero, Udogie; Bentancur, Bergvall, Sarr; Kudus, Kolo Muani, Johnson
Read the full interview with Matt Verri here.
Match Officials
Jones appointed for Spurs trip
Referee: Robert Jones
Assistants: Neil Davies and Bhupinder Singh Gill
Fourth official: Sam Barrott
VAR: Timothy Wood
Robert Jones first took charge of a Brentford game in April 2017, when he oversaw a 1-1 draw at Barnsley in the Championship.
He has since refereed a further 13 fixtures involving the Bees, the most recent of them being a 2-1 loss against Arsenal in the season before last.
Jones has been the man in the middle for 14 games this term, brandishing 53 yellow cards, and is yet to send a player off in 2025/26.
The 38-year-old's most recent appointment was for Manchester United's 2-1 win against Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park.
Memorable Meeting
Tottenham Hotspur 1 Brentford 3, (Premier League, 20 May 2023)
Bryan Mbeumo grabbed two goals and an assist to help Brentford come from behind and claim a first-ever victory at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
The Bees hadn't won away at Spurs since 1948 and looked to be heading for a defeat after Harry Kane's long-range opener in the first half.
Mbeumo equalised five minutes after the break and turned the game on its head with just over an hour played, with both efforts being fine left-footed finishes into the far corner of the goal.
He then turned provider, laying it on a plate for Yoane Wissa to add a third late on.