‘Our play-off pain will be there until we do something special’

Thomas Frank says Brentford are ready to fight for promotion again ahead of their first league match in their new stadium

For Thomas Frank, the rational thing to do is to pack up all of the pain and frustration of Brentford’s play-off final defeat and put it to one side. “I look at what I can actually affect,” he says. “Of course I am disappointed in the moment, but then I go again. It is extremely important to have that skill-set as a manager or else you can dwell too long, and that is going to drain you of energy.”

Frank (right) studied psychology at university, but it does not require a degree to know that fixating on a loss is unhealthy. “On the other hand, it will always be there, in my body,” he says. “Until we create something special another time, it will never disappear.”

Brentford came so close to promotion before losing to Fulham at Wembley last month and in a summer cut short by Covid-19 there has been no time to lick wounds. “When you are in this football hamster wheel you are just constantly going,” says Frank. “In life and football, you naturally move forward. The world does not stand still, you need to continue. When we came back in, I saw desire and hunger.”

The sense of a fresh start is only strengthened by the move to their new stadium, where Brentford will today play their first league match, against Huddersfield. Frank knows it will be the memories, built over time, that make the stadium feel like home. “The fantastic games under the lights, the last-minute winners with a full crowd,” he says.

Frank, 46, is the only manager in the top two divisions to have had no professional playing career, at youth level or adult. He only started coaching at grass-roots to gain points for his university application. “I went to a sports school in Denmark,” he says. “We just did sport for a whole year, but you also needed to coach some boys. I tried it and I thought, ‘hmm, this is quite interesting’.”

For almost a decade he coached part-time, progressing until he was leading an under-17 side in the best league in Denmark. It was not lucrative work, though, and Frank came within a few weeks of giving it all up and becoming a PE teacher. “My wife said we needed to find something else, because we did not have any money.”

Frank’s career changed with a call from Johan Lange, now the technical director of Aston Villa, offering him a full-time talent development role at Danish club B93. Frank landed his first senior role at Brondby in 2013 and left three years later, joining Brentford as an assistant. When Dean Smith departed for Villa in 2018, Frank was promoted to the top job.

Brentford’s top scorer Ollie Watkins has joined Villa and playmaker Said Benrahma is expected to leave. “I see it as a bigger project,” he says. “How can I make the team click? Even if we had the same players, I would look to mix it up.” Brentford are known for their data-driven approach but sometimes football cannot be explained. By the key measurements, Brentford were ready for promotion. So why did it not come? “I have been a pundit in Denmark, standing in the studio and needed to say some smart things about why it did not happen,” Frank says. “But sometimes you can’t explain why. What I can affect is the next bit, then I go again.”