‘Depleted’ Brentford should have beaten Spurs, says Frank

Thomas Frank heaped praise on his “depleted” Brentford team after holding top-four chasing Tottenham to a goalless draw.

Ivan Toney twice hit the woodwork from Christian Eriksen’s set pieces as the Bees – who were without Ethan Pinnock, Kristoffer Ajer, Christian Norgaard, Zanka, Sergi Canos and Frank Onyeka – moved up to 40 points.

“We got a result but we should have got an even bigger result. We should have won,” Frank said.

“I think we deserved to win the game. I know it was fairly even between the boxes in the game but we kept maybe the most dangerous two in Son and Kane extremely quiet tonight and we created a lot of good chances and opportunities where we should have scored.

“Doing that with a pretty depleted team today. We’re missing, when we normally go to a back three, Ethan Pinnock and Kristoffer Ajer, and the next one is probably Zanka.

“We missed three centre-backs so we decided to put Mads Roerslev in as an outside centre-back and then we normally would have played Sergi Canos but he was also out so we decided to play Saman Ghoddos.

“Maybe our best performing player this season or most able, Christian Norgaard, was out at the number six position with Vita (Janelt) stepping in.

“We had the second best player in four positions against a fully strength Tottenham side that are fighting for Champions League and that’s a massive credit to the players first and foremost, to the staff who have done everything to prepare them, and to the structure we have in the team.”