If Brentford and Ivan Toney have ‘mind the gap’ at the front of their minds, Leeds United should recall ‘they fear us’ and the night they began their final march to the Premier League. The day after Arsenal beat the Whites, the Bees striker was happy to dig up a video from July 2020 and United’s title-winning celebrations.
Liam Cooper and Stuart Dallas were bouncing up and down with the Championship trophy and mocking Thomas Frank’s Brentford, telling him to mind the gap. It was 12 points at that stage, if you had forgotten.
The club tweeted the clip and deleted it, but not before, of course, the internet saved it for posterity. It’s clear which 41-second video will be front of mind when Pontus Jansson’s Brentford take to the field on Sunday.
READ MORE: Brentford's tenuous Leeds United talisman is no more as 72-year myth is torn down
Frank has put his own foot in his mouth when it comes to Leeds though. The trip to Brentford in February 2020 is generally regarded as the watershed moment in that Championship title-winning campaign.
The Whites were on a desperate run of two wins in their previous 10 matches and faced with the in-form Bees, who were marching on with two losses and seven wins in their last 11. Griffin Park never conjured happy memories for Leeds either.
The scene was set for another lashing until Thomas Frank delivered Marcelo Bielsa’s team talk for him. Frank flunked the cardinal rule.
It was great copy for the media, but there’s a reason why pre-match press conferences are generally filled with non-committal platitudes about taking games as they come with no easy matches. Frank’s press conference spread like wildfire through websites, social media and, unsurprisingly, the United squad’s WhatsApp group.
If Luke Ayling’s stark post-match interview at Nottingham Forest set the foundations for a recovery, these comments were the rocket fuel the team needed to wake from their slumber. Frank said: "Of the two teams, we definitely have more momentum than Leeds right now.
“Everyone knows how much I respect Marcelo Bielsa, his staff and what he has done to build up Leeds as a club and as a team and they are the best team in the division. They couldn't pick a worse place to play on Tuesday night, they couldn't.
“I am 100 per cent sure of that. I’m 100 per cent sure they fear us going into this game.
“That’s not to say we’re going to win it because momentum is one thing, history is one thing, but then you go into the game and it has its own life. We don’t know exactly what to expect, yet I promise you one thing, we will absolutely be at it and ready to attack.”
If it had not been for the latest in a long line of Kiko Casilla errors, the Whites would have won the game. They nullified one of the division’s best attacking sides and set in motion the drive to the title.
Five consecutive wins and clean sheets followed before the pandemic struck. This will be Brentford and United’s second meeting since that fateful night.
Frank spluttered and dithered his way through the post-match press conference that night in West London. Though the head coach eventually did get that club out of the division one year after Leeds, the Dane has never lived down those brazen question marks around the character of the Leeds squad.
Football moves on and there is always a new narrative to pick up. There’s no chance Frank has sleepless nights around those comments now, but he and Brentford will always have that mark against their name.
Liam Cooper, Kalvin Phillips, Mateusz Klich, Jack Harrison and the rest will remember what he said and always have that extra five per cent in the tank to ram his words back down his throat. Remember Raphinha’s out-of-the-blue Instagram post after beating Norwich City?
Tim Krul’s Barcelona comments came years before the Brazilian’s arrival and yet he was fully aware of them. This squad does not forget and it draws on everything it can for motivation.
