Carsley’s still not keen on job
LEE Carsley continues to lead Brentford up the Championship table, but the stand-in boss is sticking to his story that he’s not interested in taking the job full-time.
The latest in a string of successes at the helm came at the expense of Nottingham Forest, despite playing the final 20 minutes with ten men.
After the impressive Sergi Canos put the Bees ahead shortly after the hour mark, Harlee Dean saw red for a swinging elbow and Henri Lansbury restored parity.
But substitute Philipp Hofmann popped up in injury-time to fire Brentford back to winning ways, only for Carsley to repeat what he said following his first game in charge back in September.
“No, I have not thought about putting my hand up for the job,” he said.
“The remit when I came was to improve our position and I think we are doing that now.
“I think it is an easier position now after this win for a manager to come in, that might well be my last game.
“I will be staying on to help with the transition before returning to my old role, we have players coming back from injury and are in a strong position.
“We played on the counterattack a little bit more after the sending off but I thought it was really important that we still carried a threat.
“Even with ten men I was really pleased with what we offered going forward and I felt like we had shown enough to deserve the result. It’s the modern game, you cannot raise your arms, you cannot give the ref an opportunity to have to make a decision and Harlee did that.
“I think the referee handled the game really well and the way the fourth official spoke to me during the game was good.”
Brentford goalkeeper David Button saved four times from Nelson Oliveira in the first half, including an instinctive block to deflect the ball over.
The Bees’ only notable chances, meanwhile, came when Alan Judge shot just wide from long range and James Tarkowski put a free header over from a corner.
Forest started the second half brightly too, but their hosts led through Canos, the on-loan Liverpool winger scoring just three minutes after coming on.
The 18-year-old poked home after good work from Dean, whose far-post header back across goal invited the finish from Canos.
Brentford were soon down to ten men, however, when Dean was sentoff for a swinging elbow on substitute Jonathan Williams, and things immediately got worse.
From the resulting free-kick Lansbury scored with a low shot into the far corner – and Forest tails were up.
But the Bees responded well to the adversity and it was Canos who led a Bees breakaway in added time that eventually saw Hofmann apply the finishing touch to a goalmouth scramble.
“I thought for 60 minutes we were in full control of the game,” said Nottingham Forest boss Dougie Freedman.
“I cannot believe we are not ahead at half-time – then Brentford get a good spell for ten minutes and take advantage of it to score.
“I thought the sending off in a strange way got them more compact and gave them that fighting spirit and for the last 20 minutes we created our own problems.
“That is no disrespect to Brentford because they hung in there and kept going but I am disappointed.”