Bees deserved a win at Birmingham, says Smith

Brentford head coach Dean Smith felt the 2-1 defeat by Birmingham was unjust and insisted his team deserved to win.

The Bees had large spells of possession, several more shots and five more corners than the Blues, but they were beaten by Maikel Kieftenbeld’s 89th-minute winner.

Earlier, Brentford substitute Philipp Hofmann had cancelled out Jacques Maghoma’s opener.

Smith said: “I’m disappointed, because I thought we were the better team.

“Maybe it’s a compliment to us how deep they played and allowed us to have a lot of ball because they thought we’d hurt them. It’s surprising when the home team has so little possession.

“But we knew they’d always be a threat on the counter-attack. They’ve countered and got the first goal but I thought our reaction to that was very good.

“We made a few mistakes at times but we recovered from it, got the goal and I thought there was only one team trying to win the game after that. But unfortunately we got undone at the end.

“It’s hard to take because we were the better team and probably deserved to win the game. But unfortunately you don’t always get what you deserve.”

Smith was also surprised former Brentford loanee Jon Toral had stayed on the pitch for a first-half tackle on Jake Bidwell, which earned the Spaniard just a yellow card.

He added: “I thought it was a bad challenge. It was after the ball had gone [and] he was out of control.

“I thought there might have been a foul on him before that that led up to that. But, nonetheless, that wasn’t given and he’s jumped in on Bids out of control and it should have been a red card by the letter of the law.”