Brentford boss Thomas Frank was left frustrated by Nottingham Forest’s time-wasting tactics during Tuesday night’s 1-0 Championship defeat.
The Bees run of six straight home league wins was brought to an end by a canny away performance, typified by goalkeeper Brice Samba being booked for time-wasting after just 24 minutes.
“It was not a good game of football,” Frank said. “Nottingham is a really good side, they defend well, they work hard, but they also had one purpose – to make it a scrappy game from minute one – which is fair, you choose how you want to do things, and we need to handle that better, which we didn’t do today.
“They paid a lot of respect to us, they didn’t want tempo in the game, and of course, they celebrated a big win because they knew this is one of the most difficult grounds to go to in the Championship. We can only blame ourselves.
“It’s part of football, they’re not the only team in the world that would do that. Of course, if we were up 2-1 and there was five minutes to go, we’d do a bit of timewasting. I just think if we do it after minute one it’s different, but that’s the way it is, people choose how they want to play the game.”
