Right, lets be honest. The writing was on the wall for Brentford as soon as they appointed Terry Butcher as their manager. Well not so much appointing him, but after his appointment where he did a photoshoot for the world's media (a photoshoot I ask you in League Two) where he sat about smiling pensively, looking towards the camera like he was Head of Sports at Eton College or something. Have a word son.

Anyway, it went from bad to worse with Butcher, and the Brentford board soon saw sense, sacked him and stuck long time Brentford servant Andy Scott in his place, bringing an immediate turnaround and rid of the club's fanbase of any worries about getting dragged into the relegation battle.

Eventually, Scott steered the Bees towards a final position of 14th place.

When he was appointed, his impact was as good as you could ever expect from a manager. That honeymoon period turned out to be the dream honeymoon cruising around the world, as they went on a run of 9 wins and 2 draws from his first twelve games in charge, and they even had people whispering about Brentford being possible play off contenders.

Lack of goals was probably the biggest problem for Brentford last season. Connell got 12 which was okay I guess, and Poole did well from midfield with 14, but after that their best scorer in the League was Lee Thorpe with four and he left in January. So Scott has gone out and got himself someone with a decent scoring record in the former of Charlie MacDonald that we discuss further down.

And that should be the big difference. They have a midfield which can score goals. If you make the assumption that Connell and Poole get a similar figure between them, and even if you assume that MacDonald only gets around fifteen, that'd be something like eleven extra goals over a season to what they had last year which will account for a higher placed finish.

Kudos to the manager too. A full season of Andy Scott will do better than a split season of Terry Butcher and then Andy Scott picking up the piece. Scott's record as a manager over a full season would average out at 68 points, which would have seen a much better finish.

Following the expiry of that initial honeymoon period, and if we're being honest, anyone could have been an improvement on Butcher, things then got a bit hit and miss with ten defeats in their final fifteen games of the season. We saw down at Griffin Park that Scott clearly had a lot of work to do, as we didn't play particularly well but left with a pretty comfortable 2-0 victory. Would suggest that the problems are a little more deep rooted than just at management level.

8th - Play Off hopefuls

On paper, it would appear that their star man last season was former Dale midfielder Glenn Poole who got a fantastic fourteen goals from midfield for them. That was most certainly the difference between 13th and finishing down with the Dagenhams of this world and thats certainly not a world that Brentford should be inhabiting. The big question I'd have on this is whether Poole can repeat that tally this time round.

In fairness to Scott, he has made changes, and bringing in MacDonald should be a big boost. Perhaps the biggest challenge facing him is trying to get MacDonald to form a partnership with the enigmatic Alan Connell. Connell has always won praise on our messageboard when he has played against us, since scoring a superb goal for Torquay many years ago, but no matter where he's been, he's never really formed a decent relationship with anyone, and his teams have often under performed. Getting them two to link up would create a handful for any defence.

If we're being critical, we don't see the squad changing too much. I know there's the odd tweak here and there, but surely last season would suggest that the squad wasn't good enough, and given that they played that way under two managers, it would say to me that its more than them just underachieving. Maybe they are already playing at their potential.

We expect a better season from the Bees tho'. Nothing outstanding, but we reckon Scott will be get them winning more games than they lose, and if they can hit the ground running (and other clichés) then they can make sure they end up at the right end of the table but it won't be enough to make the Play Offs.

The key factor could be whether the Brentford fans who are used to watching football at a higher level would see improvement as being a good thing or whether anything outside the play offs counts as failure. I fear for them that it will be the latter.