Bees ‘want to go all the way’ in Carabao Cup

Thomas Frank says Brentford will field a strong side against Chelsea on Wednesday after last Saturday’s match with Southampton was postponed due to a Covid-19 outbreak.

Frank last week called for the last round of fixtures in the Premier League to be cancelled after 13 people in the club, mostly staff members, tested positive, and although his request formally fell on deaf ears, six matches were eventually postponed after clubs across the country had a number of positive cases.

The Dane said the cancellation allowed time for the club’s training ground to be closed and fully cleaned and confirmed there have been no further positive cases since Saturday ahead of the quarter-final clash at the Brentford Community Stadium.

“The incubation time for the virus is four or five days so we wanted to limit the contact between players and staff but I think in all of society, not just football, we are as keen to keep things as normal as possible,” Frank said.

“We’ll put 11 players out there tomorrow for sure.

“The game being off helped us massively as Friday, Saturday and Sunday we were not at the training ground to help stop the transmission of the virus.

“We had one more lateral flow positive test on Saturday but zero on Sunday and Monday and today (Tuesday) so we are in a good place to go on Wednesday.”

Brentford reached the semi-finals of the competition last year and Frank said his side are desperate to make a statement against the European champions.

“From the beginning of this season we said we really want to go all the way in this tournament,” he said.

“The next game tomorrow is against the European winners who we gave an excellent test to in the last game we played them and were unlucky to lose 1-0.

“We are looking forward to it. We know we can win the game.

“It is already a statement that we are in the quarter-finals for the second year in a row, but it would be a massive statement if we could make the semi-finals for a second year in a row.”

Chelsea boss Thomas Tuchel said his side won’t be at full strength but Frank said he still expects to face a side full of quality players, but acknowledged it could be a good time to play the Blues.

“We’ll put a strong team out. I don’t know what Chelsea will do,” he said.

“We haven’t played for 10 days but my plan throughout this tournament has been to play strong teams and we have done that.

“We’ve proved in all the games we’ve played in the Premier League that we are very difficult to play against. And I expect to be the case tomorrow.

“The last time we played they controlled the first 60 minutes and scored a good goal, but they didn’t create much and then the game changed in the last 30 minutes.

“Hopefully we can play more like the last 30 minutes tomorrow and not the first 60.”

Tuchel has indicated that he will use Chelsea’s fringe players.

With a number out because of Covid-19 and others affected by injury problems, the Blues boss is expected to put out a below-strength team against the Bees.

Romelu Lukaku, Timo Werner and Callum Hudson-Odoi remain unavailable as they are still isolating after recently testing positive for Covid.

Players from Chelsea’s development squad have been training with the first team with a view to them being involved.

They included Lewis Baker, who was going to feature in the game, but he has tested positive for Covid and will therefore miss out.

But there is better news on Jorginho, who was thought to have contracted the virus.

There appears to have been a so-called false positive, with Jorginho since testing negative.

But Andreas Christensen and Trevoh Chalobah are highly unlikely to be in the squad as both are nursing injuries.

And N’Golo Kante will not be considered, having played the full 90 minutes at Wolves after his recent recovery from injury.

Boss Tuchel confirmed: “Jorginho had a negative test, so it was a wrong positive, and he is back in training.

“Andreas Christensen is very doubtful and the same for Trevoh Chalobah.”

Tuchel wanted to ease Kante back into the team but had to rely on him at Wolves because of Chelsea’s shortage of players.

The match went ahead after the club’s request for it to be postponed was rejected by the Premier League.

Tuchel therefore has no intention of selecting Kante on Wednesday.

The German explained: “What we did with N’Golo Kante – 90 minutes – was close to being irresponsible.

“Will he be involved in the squad now against Brentford? No. Simply no.

“I will not do it and we will now give him time to recover.”