Bees 3 Aldershot 0

An emphatic victory!

Brentford returned to winning ways with a fairly emphatic victory over Aldershot at Griffin Park.

In truth, the visitors came out of the blocks quicker with some fairly direct attacking play, but Brentford withheld the pressure with a couple of timely interceptions from Mark Phillips.

As the half wore on, Brentford's superior quality in posession began to show, particularly when we got the ball down onto the deck. We had already wasted a couple of good chances (a screwed Rhodes shot and a headed opportunity) when a period of sustained pressure was rewarded with a Marcus Bean goal. The strike was originally flagged for outside, but then given by the referee as the ball to Bean was a mishit backpass from Scott Davies.

Shortly afterwards, a clumsy challenge from Chris Blackburn handed Brentford a penalty. After quite a long delay, and some goal-line acrobatics from the Shots keeper Jaimez-Ruiz, Charlie Macdonald saw his penalty saved. The striker reacted well though, and rattled the bar from 25 yards shortly afterwards, before Brentford were quite literally handed another penalty by Anthony Charles. With balls of steel, Macdonald again stood up to take it, this time firing a great penalty into the bottom corner of the net.

The game continued with end to end action - Rhodes missing another good chance and Ben Hamer reacting well to a low shot to his right.

The game died out a bit after half-time, Brentford continued to show quality on the ball but Aldershot continued to battle, and Hamer was forced into another decent save. But Jordan Rhodes wrapped up the points late on with a great individual goal, leaving two defenders for dead before poking the ball past Jaimez-Ruiz and celebrating wildly.

This was a decent win against an Aldershot side who play direct attacking football - and to keep a clean sheet was a particularly good result. In truth The Shots look slightly cumbersome at the back, so Brentford will have to be at the top of their game to secure a similar win at Shrewsbury next weekend.

Bees: Hamer, Halls (Osborne), Dickson, Phillips, Bennett, Newton (Williams), Wood, Bean, O'Connor, Macdonald, Rhodes.

Aldershot Town: Jaimez-Ruiz; Blackburn, Day, Charles, Straker; Hudson, Davies, Harding (sub Newman 77 mins), Donnelly (sub Soares 55 mins); Grant, Elvins (sub Hylton 62 mins)

Player ratings:
Hamer - great recovery from his mistake at Macclesfield, looked very pleased with his clean sheet
Halls - Still seems to want too much time on the ball and his passing was sloppy at time
Dickson - a couple of ropey moments in defence but attacked with aplomb and battled hard throughout
Phillips - kept us in it early on, look a bit shaky against pace over distance
Bennett - solid if unspectacular
Newton - had an excellent game on the right of midfield, good to have him back
Wood - links well with Dickson and works his socks off for the team
Bean - another assured performance and another goal
O'Connor - really mopped in midfield, kept the ball moving and another who plays for the team
Macdonald - looked a bit out of sorts early on, but upped his work-rate and forced the backpass for Bean's goal before the penalty dramas
Rhodes - lightweight at times but played an important part in some of the best attacking football that we played

Thanks to beesotted for the match report

January 28, 2009