Brentford boss Thomas Frank admitted his team need to improve following the 1-0 defeat against fellow Championship hopefuls Nottingham Forest at Griffin Park.
The Bees lost their second game of the season against Sabri Namouchi’s well organised outfit, who extended their lead ahead of them to four points.
Brentford remain in fifth spot despite losing to a goal on 14 minutes by Joe Lolley. But this was a major opportunity missed.
Their main attacking trio of Ollie Watkins, Said Benrahma and Bryan Mbuemo were kept quiet by Forest on a night when the hosts appeared anything but convincing.
Frank will now have to galvanise his men from this out-of-sorts display before travelling to Hull City on Saturday in order to get their promotion quest back on track.
“This was not a good game of football from both sides,” admitted Frank.
“It was a 0-0 game. We dominated this in more ways but they had a goal with a deflected shot.
“Nottingham are a very good side who worked hard and they had a purpose to make it a scrappy game. We need to handle that better.”
Frank conceded that Brentford need to do more in similar situations between now and the end of the season.
He added: “They got an early goal and they celebrated a big win because for them they know this is a difficult ground to come to.
“They celebrated like they had won promotion. But we can only blame ourselves and learn from this.
“We knew this would be a very tight game as they defend very well, and you need a little luck sometimes like they did.”
[scriptless]