Fired-up Frank aims to blow Swans away
THOMAS FRANK will try to contain “the hurricane inside” as he bids to become jinxed Brentford’s gust of honour.
The Bees go into their £170m promotion shootout with Swansea nursing football’s worst play-off record – nine attempts, nine disappointments.
Normally, head coach Frank is the coolest dude in the technical area, but the Dane unleashed a tornado of frustration – angrily kicking the drinks cooler – when his side conceded a daft goal in last weekend’s semi-final thriller against Bournemouth.
But he intends to remain composed in football’s richest game as the Bees seek to end a 74-year exile from the top flight – but when the stakes are so high, that’s easier said than done.
Frank said: “There are a lot of emotions, of course. I was watching the Europa League final the other night and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is always very, very calm. “Normally I know I am relatively calm but there is a hurricane inside
me, and it must be in him too.
“He must use so much energy to be that calm. Of course there are emotions in all of us and we know what we are playing for. We will do our best to keep a cool head.
“Maybe it helps sometimes (to let the hurricane out). Last Saturday, that was a moment where it was impossible to hold it back, for me at least.”
Brentford are doomed to suffer more heartbreak if they pay attention to kit anoraks who warn that teams who traditionally play in red-andwhite stripes and black shorts have featured in 32 play-offs and 16 finals without achieving promotion.
Sunderland, Sheffield United, Exeter and
Lincoln are also familiar with the curse but Frank shrugged: “Fortunately, I am not superstitious at all.
“I know how the human works.
“You hear stuff about black cats and walking under ladders and I understand why people think like that.
“But I can’t live my life like that. We just have to do things a little bit better, look after the small details and make sure we change the narrative.
“Those stats about red and white stripes are there to be broken one day. I’ll let our kit man take care of that.
“The atmosphere is calm, relaxed and focused with the understanding that we are facing a Swansea team who have had a fantastic season and their manager, Steve Cooper, is one of the best English coaches around.”
Frank admits he hasn’t been able to watch Brentford’s defeat by Fulham at Wembley last season because the pain of falling just short torments him.
“One day I thought
might put it
I mind
on, but I didn’t,” he smiled. “And it wouldn’t do me any good.”
Last summer, Frank promised to have a pint in each pub on the four corners of former ground Griffin Park if they reached the Premier League.
Now the Princess Royal has closed down, there are only three.
And if Brentford, this season’s Championship leading scorers, blow it again, you have to wonder if there’s something in that red-and-white curse after all.
JAMAL LOWE is dreaming of following in the footsteps of rags-to-riches success story Jamie Vardy.
But the Swansea striker knows he must first fire his side into the Premier League at Wembley today if he is to get anywhere near the Leicester ace.
Lowe, 26, always had the belief he could reach the top flight when he grew up in Harrow – a