Jon De Souza praised his players’ quick learning after they put last week’s 5-3 defeat to Colchester United behind them to defeat Ipswich Town on Saturday.
For the second week in succession The Bees travelled East but they came back with a far different result this time as Bradley Clayton’s brace and goals from Makhosini Khanye, Zain Westbrooke and Decarey Sheriff secured a first win in four.
After the defeat to Colchester United in their opening game of the New Year Jon called on his side to be better at both ends of the pitch and he was pleased with the response that he got.
“It was a good performance overall,” said Jon.
“I thought for the first half hour and the last 20 minutes I was pleased with how we performed.
“We needed to do a bit better before half-time and just after we went 3-0 up but overall I am pleased with the performance.
“The most pleasing thing was our cutting edge today because I don’t think we had that many chances compared to last week where we missed a lot of chances.
“There weren’t many opportunities that I felt we should have scored from that we didn’t score from.
“I felt we looked after the ball well when we were on top of the game.
“We passed it well, trusted people on the ball and moved it around the pitch well.
“We spoke before the game about being good in both boxes.
“After last week we weren’t good in both boxes but today I felt we were.
“We probably created ten or 15 goalscoring opportunities last week but today we only created six or seven.
“That showed we were a lot more clinical and defensively we looked quite solid.
“It is a learning environment and we want players to make mistakes so that they learn.
“I am delighted because it looked like that learned from last week which is good.
“It is very pleasing that they were able to bounce back and put in a good performance today.
“We worked hard during the week on certain aspects and they were put into place today.
“The players did well today and those that came on added a bit of tempo and intensity to our play.”
The Youth Team lined up slightly differently on Saturday morning as their formation looked to match that the first-team plays.
Bradley Clayton was used as a loan striker while Makhosini Khanye and Kyjuon Marsh-Brown played on the wings with Zain Westbrooke in support.
Jon was pleased with how his side adapted to the tactical change and how much more solid they looked as a team in this new formation.
“We want the players to be tactically flexible and tactically adaptable and they showed that today,” said Jon.
“We want our wide players to come inside the pitch to allow our full-backs to go quite high up the pitch.
“That gives us overloads up the pitch which is how we want to play and how the first-team want to play.
“I felt that worked quite well.
“We want to attack as a team and defend as a team.
“We want all our players to join in and play fluid attacking football but we also want them to be organised and disciplined defensively.”
Not only was Jon pleased with the performance of the team as a whole but he was also very pleased with some of the individual performances within the team.
For Jon, looking to create individuals who can one day represent Brentford’s first-team or play professional football means individual performances are more important than that of the team.
Jon drew special praise for Bradley Clayton who, aside from scoring twice and setting up the other three goals, worked tirelessly closing down and pressing from the front.
“The most important thing for us is the individual performances,” said Jon.
“We want them to perform well individually within a team because it is an individual sport for us.
“We want players to go on and play in the first-team.
“The fact that we won 5-0 isn’t the most important thing for us.
“The most important thing is that we have players in there who can play at a high level.
“Bradley will be the first to admit that his performances haven’t been at a good level the past two of three weeks.
“The one thing that has always been consistent with him is his work-ethic and his work-rate.
“Today he worked just as hard but showed the quality that he possesses.”
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