Frank desperate to keep Brentford players

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Brentford boss Thomas Frank is desperate to keep his best players at the club after a breakthrough in the team’s form.

Frank picked up his third win as boss, against Stoke, to extend the Bees’ unbeaten run to five games.

Neal Maupay, Ollie Watkins and Romaine Sawyers are all of interest to top Championship clubs, while Alan Judge and Nico Yennaris are nearing their exits from Griffin Park.

“I’m massively hoping we can keep the team together. It would be nice if it was the 31st of January tomorrow,” he said.

“We have a good squad. Now we have made all our small adjustments, you can see in our performances that we are going up.

“I want to keep all our players if possible but anything can happen in football and we are prepared.

“There are rumours about Judge and other clubs and it could happen that he leaves. And it’s the same for Yennaris.”

Said Benrahma and Rico Henry scored after the Bees led from a Ryan Shawcross own goal to hand defeat to Nathan Jones in his first match a Stoke boss.

And Frank said: “It was the definitely the most complete performance from us so far. It was dominating ad controlled from the first to the last.”