Bees ‘need a few favours’ to reach play-offs – Smith

Dean Smith admitted his Brentford side “might need a few favours” in their bid to sneak into the Championship play-offs.

But he insisted the Bees would continue to focus on performances in the final five games following the 1-0 home win over Ipswich.

“That’s all we talk about because if we do that we’ll get results and we don’t have any expectation on us apart from the expectation we put on ourselves,” said Smith.

“All we can do is concentrate on our own game and see where it takes us. We certainly won’t be throwing the towel in, but we might need a few favours.”

Smith said Ipswich made it difficult for his side to score more than the single Neal Maupay penalty after Jonas Knudsen’s shove on Sergi Canos in the box.

“That was as difficult a game as we have had this season,” said Smith.

“They made it very tough for us by going man for man which made it hard to get our passing game going, but you always expect that from a Mick McCarthy side.

“There were only two chances of note in the first half and it was always going to be something like a penalty that settled it.

“I saw the hand on Sergi’s back and he went down, but we’ve had enough of them that haven’t been given this season.”

Smith hailed the resilience of his side in a niggly stop-start game.

He said: “We had to work extremely hard to get time and space on the ball and when we did get it down we were loose and didn’t use it well.

“But this is possibly a game we wouldn’t have won earlier in the season. We had to dog it out and I thought we did that.”