Frank savours ‘top performance’ by Fosu in thumping Bees win

Thomas Frank praised Tarique Fosu after the winger played a key part in two of Brentford’s goals in their superb 5-0 win at Preston.

Frank brought Fosu into the side for the first time in five games.

The Bees boss said: “Tarique did very well and I think what he can give us in the middle of the pitch with a back five is he doesn’t lose the ball that often, and has that extra ability on the ball.

“We know he has that engine and a brilliant flourish and he showed that today. He does struggle with consistency, but this was a top performance.”

After four successive draws, Frank also switched to a back three, with defensive midfielder Christian Norgaard playing an unfamiliar centre-half role.

Frank explained: “It is very important to look behind the performances in the last four games. They were not that bad, but also not that good. We had lacked that top performance but we got that today.

“You can see that in the last couple of games we created enough chances to be dangerous enough, but to make it easy you need to have everything balanced.

“With Rico Henry and Henrik Dalsgaard out you can’t go just 4-4-2 with four normal centre-backs. With three, you can still defend and be positive going forward. Christian’s ability on the ball gave us an extra dimension.

“We started very well, scored two extremely good goals in the first half – the first from one wing-back to the other and the second one was good movement, and having an extra striker in the box helped open up the space for Marcus Forss.

“In the first half it was a tight game and we had to defend a lot of long throws, set pieces, direct balls and second balls and we dealt with them very well.

“The second half was a little bit easier at 2-0 up – We needed to be switched on, but after the third goal we were in very good control.”

The scoreline allowed Brentford to give Championship debuts to two more B team players – Fin Stevens, on his 18th birthday, who had played in the Carabao Cup, and Mads Bidstrup.

Frank said: “It is not often you can do that, especially when you are in the run-in and fighting for promotion.

“It’s always special to use them, especially as the players work so hard to try to progress. I was pleased to be able to give debuts to them.”