TONE & DUSTED
Ivan making difference as Bees stop the rot
By Paul Brown RED-HOT Ivan Toney showed he’s still a safe bet as he scored his third goal in four games to give Brentford revenge over Wolves.
This was the fourth time in 45 days that the two teams had met, but the first since Toney returned from his betting ban.
And after Christian Norgaard opened the scoring and Craig Dawson had an equaliser ruled out by VAR, Toney secured all three points. Wolves had only lost once in nine matches before this and hadn’t lost in any of that trio of other encounters with the Bees knocking them out of the FA Cup in the process.
But Toney makes such a difference to his side and it was his clinical finish which burst the home side’s bubble just as they were threatening a comeback.
It was also just what the doctor ordered for Brentford, lifting them to 14th and putting daylight between them and the bottom three.
And it will have come as a big relief to Bees boss Thomas Frank, whose travel-sick team managed to avoid becoming the first side this season to lose six top-flight away games in a row.
It was all Brentford in the first half with Wolves fortunate on several occasions.
After surviving an early VAR handball scare, keeper Jose Sa dropped the home side in it with a poor pass out.
Neal Maupay pounced but Sa made amends by deflecting his point-blank shot wide, and then denied him again from the resulting corner.
With Brentford pushing, Sergio Reguilon swung in a corner and Dawson uncharacteristically lost his man, allowing Norgaard to head home.
Wolves came out fired up for the second half, with Pedro Neto hitting the post, before Dawson headed in a Neto cross.
Only trouble was, VAR Peter Bankes reviewed it and decided Dawson was marginally offside.
So it was a real sucker punch when Vitaly Janelt picked off another poor pass from Sa and fed Toney for an easy finish as Brentford stopped the rot after losing seven of their previous eight league games. WOLVES: Sa 4; Kilman 6, Dawson 6, Toti 5 (Fraser (46) 6); Semedo 6, Lemina 6, Joao Gomes 6 (Doyle (63) 6), Ait-nouri 6; Sarabia 6, Cunha 6 (Bellegarde (20) 6); Neto 8 BRENTFORD: Flekken 6; Collins 6, Pinnock 6, Mee 6; Roerslev 6, Jensen 6 (Yarmoliuk (70) 6), Norgaard 7 (Ajer (85) 5), Janelt 6 (Baptiste (85) 5), Reguilon 7; Toney 8, Maupay 6 (Lewis-potter (77) 6) STAR MAN: Pedro Neto – Did not deserve to be on the losing