SKY IS THE LIMIT FOR FLYING BEES
Brentford just one point off top spot
MARK Warburton believes the sky is the limit for Brentford after they continued their unexpected promotion push with a fifth successive win at the expense of Wolves.
Alan Judge, Stuart Dallas, Andre Gray and Jota were all on target to move the Bees up to third, outside the automatic promotion places on goal difference.
And after inflicting a fourth successive defeat on their visitors, Warburton is refusing to set a limit on what his side can achieve.
“I don’t know how you can go into a dressing room of players and just ask them to survive,” said the Brentford boss.
“That’s not what we’re about, we won’t say we want top 12 or top ten, we’ll try and maintain a level of performance and see where we end up in May.
“It’s a great place to be, we’re one point off the top and I think we deserve to be there and if you look at the detail we’ve had a couple of penalty shouts and we could have had two or three more points.
“We’re in a good place but if you dip your standards for just one or two games in this division then you get hurt.
“At Middlesbrough we had one bad half of football and we got battered 4-0 and it could have been six or seven that day but we use that.
“Wolves came here as a wounded animal and if we’d have given them anything they’d have hurt us but fortunately we didn’t give them anything from the first whistle.”
After the officials ruled Danny Graham’s early header had not crossed the line after hitting the bar, the game’s first real moment of quality brought the opening goal.
The imperious Judge cut in from the left and swapped passes with Jon Toral before nudging his first goal of the season past Carl Ikeme.
Bakary Sako then squandered two great chances to equalise when he was denied by Bees keeper David Button before failing to control a cross at the back post.
After the break the hosts began to suffocate their fellow newly-promoted side before a moment of brilliance from Alex Pritchard helped seal the game.
The Tottenham loanee cut inside from the right and beat three Wolves defenders before rolling the ball perfectly into the path of substitute Dallas, who finished low into the near post.
Gray added his eighth of the campaign, and made it five in his last five games, with a superb run from the halfway line which culminated in a rocket shot across Ikeme.
Jota finished off a flowing team move in stoppage time for the 14th goal Kenny Jackett’s side have conceded in four games, leaving the Wolves manager furious.
“It’s a poor run with a lot of goals against,” he said. “We’ve have worked hard and talked a lot about getting back to ones and zeroes but that hasn’t happened today.
“While we were pushing to get that crucial first goal back Brentford did very well on the counter-attack and we looked very naïve and open.
“It’s a poor run we’re on definitely and the things that we’ve been flagging up haven’t been carried through at certain stages of the game.
“Some of them are big players who’ve struggled and they’re looking for their confidence and our set-up when the ball turns over sometimes is very, very poor.
“It’s a tough time and a disappointment for our fans who, for the majority, backed us very well.
“The pressure is not a nice feeling at all but it’s part of my job and part of my industry and it happens. I’m not saying you can shrug it off easily but it’s part of it and it’s what you do next that’s important.”