ASK ANY MANAGER whether they would prefer to play Chelsea or Sunderland and only one would plump for the Barclays Premiership leaders rather than the team who are 53 points behind them and propping up the table. Ask Martin Allen whether he is looking forward to playing Sunderland in the fourth round of the FA Cup at Griffin Park on Saturday and the Brentford manager says that he would much rather play Chelsea.
“I went to watch Sunderland play Chelsea and we would be better off facing the top teams in the Premiership,” Allen said. “The Sunderland squad assembled by Mick McCarthy are proper, home-grown, dedicated, professional, honest English lads and I think we would have been better off having a few Italians and a couple of Spaniards down here and giving them a bit of the old English.
“The game against Sunderland will be tougher than if we were playing Chelsea because we would have ripped them apart — we would definitely have beaten them.”
The Brentford manager may talk a good game, but luckily at this level he has the players to back up his arguments. Huddersfield Town returned to West London two weeks after losing 2-1 to Chelsea in the third round of the FA Cup at Stamford Bridge and although Gary Taylor-Fletcher managed to score against the Premiership champions, he and his colleagues rarely looked as if they would do so at Griffin Park.
The tone of a spiky contest was set when Ricky Newman was sent off for violent conduct in the first half after the Brentford captain’s right boot landed on Chris Brandon’s head while his opponent was lying injured on the ground.
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Despite being reduced to ten men, though, the home team pressed forward and took the lead soon after when Paul Rachubka failed to hold on to a free kick and Lloyd Owusu tapped in from close range.
Rachubka’s day went from bad to worse three minutes after the interval when he was sent off for fouling Dudley Campbell outside the penalty area. Phillip Senior, his replacement, capped a miserable afternoon for Huddersfield goalkeepers by allowing Campbell’s daisycutter to slip under his body and into the net 13 minutes from time.
By then Greg Dyke, who was appointed Brentford’s non-executive chairman on Friday, was beaming in his new seat in the main stand. The former BBC DirectorGeneral knows entertainment when he sees it. Little wonder that he swapped the Beeb for the Bees.