Welcome to my third Christmas message as Chairman of Brentford.
I remain honoured and privileged to be at the helm of this fantastic club at such an exciting time in our history. The calendar year of 2015 will undoubtedly go down in club history as one of our most eventful, both on and off the field. We have learnt a lot.
The success we had last season in our first year back at Championship level took most people by surprise but after a poor start we have kicked on again and once more the 2nd half of the season holds much promise, as we try to equal or improve on last season’s 5th place finish.
Lee Carsley steadied our ship and Dean Smith has recently arrived to both build on that stability and to innovate in accordance with our strategy and I feel very calm, yet excited as we head into 2016.
As Dean said – the first half last Saturday has set the standard. If we can maintain that level of play then I have no doubt we will be in contention come the end of the season as we continue to strive for promotion to the Premier League. Bournemouth and Watford have shown what can be achieved and why shouldn’t we believe we can emulate them?
We continue to make substantial progress on the plans for the new stadium albeit that most of this has gone under the radar but we hope by this time next year we will be well into the programme for the building of the new Brentford Community Stadium. Our target date for our first match is still July 2018.
Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to wish all our fans a very Merry Christmas and a happy and healthy new year. Your support has been fantastic once again this year and together we can look forward to a very bright future for the club where all of us as fans can continue to create that special Griffin Park atmosphere which will help get us over the finishing line!
Merry Christmas everyone
Cliff