Among the many elements of Brentford’s Danish connection is their commitment to producing stories that might just as easily have been written by Hans Christian Andersen.
At the turn of the year, it seemed unlikely that the most heart-warming chapter of this particular footballing fairytale was still to be written, and yet here we are.
On Saturday afternoon, Christian Eriksen is expected to step onto a football pitch in a competitive setting for the first time since he was carried off one, the world stunned and fearing for his life, more than eight months ago.
There have been so many people and circumstances to thank for the sequence of events that have led here, to west London, and a comeback that was a million miles from anyone’s thoughts on that shocking June day.
All the strands seem to have come together nicely — Eriksen back playing football in the Premier League at a fittingly likeable club under a Danish boss, Thomas Frank, who coached him as a teenager — but there is an urgency and trepidation to the whole scenario.
Not because of what Eriksen has been through, though there will be a nervousness watching him go up for his first header or be clattered in his first 50-50.
More because of what he now steps into, joining a side who are in a rut, having taken just one point from their last seven league games.
Coinciding with a series of unlikely revivals from seemingly-doomed rivals, it has seen the Bees dragged to the very precipice of a relegation scrap, four points above the drop, conceding games in hand to almost all of their rivals.
Goals have been hard to come by, not helped by Ivan Toney’s recent absence, but even at their best this season Frank’s men have lacked a certain spark, a link between the solid foundation upon which their early-season form was built and a persevering but often isolated attack.
That is where Eriksen comes in, and why his three assists in two behind-closed-doors friendlies in the past fortnight have already raised expectations. Eriksen the inspiration now comes as a given, but it is Eriksen the creator, assist-maker, goal-getter, that Brentford so dearly need to prove the difference — and quick.
They have just 12 matches left to play in a maiden Premier League campaign they are desperate to ensure does not prove a one-off. Crucially, half of those come against the teams that are directly below them — and it is now those half-a-dozen six-pointers that will surely decide their fate, starting with the visit of Newcastle.
If Eriksen’s return stands to be the most life-affirming moment of this Premier League season, then Newcastle’s Saudi takeover certainly lies among the more troubling, and it is not hard to see why the Bees will continue their residency as the neutral’s favourite with the Dane among their ranks tomorrow afternoon.
But there is a growing sense that Frank and his side have perhaps been given something of an easy ride, that the aforementioned fairytale has continued to hide the reality of an alarming slump.
Eriksen’s mere presence will no doubt reinforce the positive narrative for now, but if it is to be intact come the end of the season, he will surely have a much bigger part to play.
