Brentford Head Coach Dean Smith is looking forward to renewing battle with Fulham, after sampling the derby atmosphere at Craven Cottage early in his Griffin Park tenure.
“Brentford Fulham games are not end of season affairs any time you played them,” said Dean. “The players are looking forward to it. I sampled the game at Craven Cottage; I think it was my second game here and it was a great atmosphere. I thought it was an entertaining game, we should have won it. Jota scored a perfectly good goal to make it 3-2 but got disallowed by an offside flag that wasn’t.
“We’ll be looking to go one better; we’re on a good run of form. There’s a lot of confidence in the dressing room.”
Dean revealed that Jake Bidwell is unlikely to be included in the squad due to injury with Lasse Vibe rated no better than 50/50 for the West London Derby.
“Marco took a knock on his calf so he’s still sore,” said Dean. “Lasse (Vibe) we’re not too sure about. He’s done some work with the medical department. Scotty [Hogan] should be fine. Philipp Hofmann has trained all week and he’ll be in the squad.”
Dean reviewed the midweek defeat at Hull City and was disappointed his side did not perform better.
“We debriefed it and looked at things we could have done better,” said Dean. “When you watch a game back it looks different to how you saw it. Up until they scored we’d been a threat and David hadn’t made a save, but neither had their goalkeeper so it became a bit of a midfield battle.”