By Daniel Wood
Huddersfield Town will face Brentford in the SkyBet Championship at Brentford Community Stadium on Saturday 19th September; 3 pm KO.
Carlos Corberan will take charge of his third competitive game as the Town boss.
Hopefully, third time’s the charm, as he has lost both of his first two competitive games against Rochdale Town and Norwich City respectively.
The Terriers were one of 11 teams to lose their opening day fixture, which sees them in the bottom half of the table after one game.
Brentford Stats
The Bees also lost their opening day fixture in the SkyBet Championship 1-0 away to Birmingham City.
However, they bounced back in the mid-week with a 2-0 away win at Premier League side Southampton in the EFL Cup to take them through to the third round of the competition.
Brentford finished 3rd in the Championship last season and narrowly missed out on promotion to the Premier League after losing to Fulham in the play-off final.
Brentford won 24 games in the division last season, drawing 9 and losing 13. They scored the most goals in the division with 80 and conceded the second least amount of goals with 38, which added up to the best goal difference in the division with 42.
Coming into the season they were considered one of the favourites for promotion, but the loss of Ollie Watkins and the potential loss of Said Benrahma may have slowed down those thoughts.
Their manager, Thomas Frank took charge on 16 October 2018 and has won 41 games of his 92 in charge giving him a 44.6%-win rate at the helm.
His only previous club that he has coached is Brondby IF in the Danish Superliga. He achieved 4th and 3rd place finished respectively in the 2013-14 and 2014-15 seasons. They qualified for the Europa League group stages but failed to make it to the group stage on both attempts.
Ones to Watch
JOSH DASILVA
The exciting midfielder joined Brentford from Arsenal in 2018 and has already made over 60 appearances for the club. He has scored 11 goals for the club with 10 of those coming last season in the Championship. Six of the goals came during a 10-match spell. He has been a key player for the Bees since his arrival and he looks like he is going from strength to strength.
HENRIK DALSGAARD
The Danish international right-back moved to Brentford from Belgian side Zulte Waragem in 2017. He has made over 100 appearances for the Bees during that time and has pitched in with four goals. One of his goals came in last seasons play-off final which saw Brentford miss out on promotion to the Premier League after losing 2-1 to their London rivals.
SERGI CANOS
The Spanish winger has made over 140 appearances for Brentford since joining on loan in 2015/16 before joining on a permanent deal in 2017 from Norwich City. He has scored 21 goals during that time. Canos spent three years in Barcelona’s Academy from 2010 until 2013 when he joined Liverpool FC.
Team News – Huddersfield Town
Terence Kongolo, Tommy Elphick, Naby Sarr, Ryan Schofield and Lewis O’Brien are all unavailable for the Brentford game.
Danny Ward missed the game against Norwich City and there has been no information about his status.
PREDICTION
Huddersfield Town slightly leads the head to head record against Brentford. Town have won on 26 occasions, there have been 17 draws and Brentford have won 24 times.
The Terriers are unbeaten against Brentford since 2016. The last four times the teams have played, Town have won three games and there has been one draw.
The one draw came last time out when the sides drew 0-0 at the John Smith Stadium in January.
Both sides come into this game after losing their opening fixture in the Championship, however, the Bees may be higher on confidence after their cup win against Southampton. With that said, Town will be the fresher of the two teams having not played for a full week.
Brentford are the stronger side on paper and performed a lot better in the league last season than Town who were in a relegation fight.
As last seasons results showed though, Town were still able to pull out positive results against Brentford despite their much lower position in the table.
Despite this, I can’t see Town getting a positive result against Brentford, especially after the Bees’ performance against the Saints.
Therefore, I predict: