Brentford

Last Season at a glance

24th in League One

Brentford were rubbish last season. Properly rubbish, not just your usual sort of rubbish. They were dire and after an unbeaten run of seven games at the beginning of the season, they went on the sort of run which would no doubt have got Chris Casper a ten year contract, picking up just one win between the start of September and February. By all rights, they should have been relegated and made to play in League Two from about Xmas time.

Supporters who have passed their thirtieth birthday will have good memories of Terry Butcher. He was your archetypal tough man central defender, and that blood splattered image of him will stay with me until the day I die.

But is he really a football manager? He looks like some friendly PE teacher in the image above, but he must one of handful of managers to have been sacked in two different continents.

Whilst Motherwell supporters may argue differently, Butcher has never struck me as being up to the job of being a manager, and its only his name as a player which has seen him secure so many high profile positions.

It was certainly out of the blue, when Brentford announced him as their new manager

Well if the problems from last season were down to the players, then they've certainly done something about it by drafting in a whole host of new players.

From the list above, there are eight new faces arriving at Griffin Park for the start of the new season, so if there was a losing mentality that had set in at Brentford, it won't be affecting the new players.

And if we point out below that Butcher is lacking experience of League Two, then he's ensured that the signings that he's brought in have all played at this level.

It could be worse?

Well yes it could, because like we discussed when we previewed Rotherham, the Bees are in freefall and could very much find themselves in a relegation battle if they aren't careful.

Last time they were down here, they spent a fortune, probably well over a million pounds to ensure that their stay was for one season only. But given their current state, their stay could be for one season only for all the wrong reasons.

And let's be fair, Terry Butcher is not the man to sort things out. Yes, you'd like him on your side if it all kicked off down the pub, but you wouldn't want to trust your football club with him. He just seems a bit clueless as a manager, and that bloody picture has transformed into something other than a 1980's version of Gary Pallister.

And the players he has signed may well have League Two experience, but they have also experience of being released by League Two sides for not being good enough. You don't replace your top scorer with Lee Thorpe if you are planning on a successful season.

And if Glen Poole hadn't been attacked at Peterboro, would we ever remember that he actually played for us? I don't think so.

We at RochdaleAFC.com have always been quite a fan of Alan Connell and thought he's been a touch unlucky with his career so far.

He scored a great goal at Spotland a couple of seasons back when he was playing for Torquay, though he lost his way a little at Plainmoor. Perhaps understandably, as he's hardly your Ian Atkins style player.

He moved on to Hereford last season, and was top scorer for the Bulls despite being in and out of the side. He got double figures for the season.

We've probably been a bit generous with this prediction. It was a toss up between them and Rotherham as to which of the relegated League One clubs would continue their descent, with the Millers just pipping Brentford to that position. But we wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if both of those teams continued their "Who is the crappest team?" row from last season.

Butcher fills us with no confidence whatsoever, as you might have imagined from the slating we've given him above. We could be wrong on that, as he won a lot of praise for his time at Motherwell, but he's a manager with no knowledge of the lower divisions at all, and certainly not League Two.

And the players he's brought in..... Fair enough, he had to bring some new ones in but with the best will in the world, they are League Two journeymen and not particularly good League Two journeymen at that. We've picked Connell as being the pick of them, but they've signed a pair of strikers who grabbed just seventeen goals between the two of them last season, and Thorpe himself isn't going to get any better at his age.

So 15th is a very generous 15th, and it's definitely not going to be a position they will finish higher than.