Bradley Clayton saw Thursday’s entertaining draw with Watford in the U21 Professional Development League Two South as points dropped after The Bees surrendered a 3-1 lead to draw 3-3. The first match between the two sides in November saw The Bees emerge 4-3 winners and this was another thoroughly entertaining affair as Clayton’s penalty and then a brace from Andy Gogia had Flemming Pedersen’s side 3-1 ahead after an hour. However Alex Jakubiak scored twice late on to complete his hat-trick to deny The Bees the win.
Speaking to Bees Player after the match Bradley admitted that Brentford should have been out of sight after an hour.
“We played well today and created chances but I think that we should have taken more of our chances,” said Bradley. “We are a bit disappointed with 3-3 and we feel like we deserved to win this game. We created more chances and we created enough chances to win comfortably. At the end of the game we were down to nine men with Herson Rodrigues Alves and Tom Field being injured. We hoped to dig in but it is two points lost. We couldn’t get out of our penalty area. We hoped to hold firm but we couldn’t this time. We should have held out so we will look over in analysis and see what went wrong to improve on it.
“We were delighted with the first hour’s performance. We created chances we played forward and we were putting into action what we had been doing on the training pitch. All that we needed was more goals. We could have been 6-1 up after an hour and then the game would have been dead.”
Bradley’s first-half penalty, which he won drawing a rash tackle from Matthew Hall, was his third goal of the season and the diminutive striker also had a hand in the second goal as his square ball was finished clinically by Andy Gogia. The 18-year-old said it was always nice to be involved in the goals but added that a lot of the credit has to go to the players around him.
“It is always good for a striker when you score or assist but you have to look at the guys behind me,” said Bradley. “I couldn’t have done that without James Ferry putting the ball in or Andy Gogia making the run. It is nice to constantly score and to get in the rhythm of scoring one or two here and there. When you are in the rhythm and free scoring that is when it is best to be a striker.”
Bradley is enjoying working under new Development Squad Head Coach Flemming Pedersen, who took over at the start of the year. The striker believes that the jump between Development Squad and First-Team football is the hardest jump to make and having someone like Flemming in charge can only help players towards The Bees First-Team.
“There is a lot more work under Flemming on our tactical work, our philosophy and how we want to play,” said Bradley. “The gap between Under-21s and First-Team is the most difficult gap to bridge so if you can be so prepared that you just slot straight into any position then that is exactly what you want. We have got hold of the ideas that we are working with and now we are trying to make it work on the pitch.”
Bees Player subscribers can view the interview with Bradley below