Brentford is built to counter, but what they do when they counter is interesting. Their rest-defense sits back much deeper than most teams would, meaning that they can counter you, but you can’t counter them if you win back the ball.

The distance between Brentford’s back line and front line is large. This stretched Crystal Palace out further than they normally would be positioned defensively.

That space tempts Crystal Palace’s defenders to move forward. Once they move forward, Brentford can spring in behind them, into Crystal Palace’s end.

The thing that makes Brentford unique is that the defenders, sometimes the fullbacks, and one midfielder will jog up the pitch as their forwards sprint forward and attempt to attack Crystal Palace’s penalty area quickly. This gap between the two groups of players widens as they get closer to the opposition’s goal.

Those four defenders and one midfielder, in their rest defense, have around ten to twenty yards of separation between them and the nearest Crystal Palace player once Palace win back the ball. Unless those Brentford defenders step forward, you can’t get behind them.

If Crystal Palace tries to match the separation Brentford creates by having their forwards and maybe a midfielder stay higher up the pitch, not sprinting back to defend, not only is their defense vulnerable, but the game can become quite stretched because of the large amount of space that is created in the midfield.

This large spacing from Brentford helps ward off counters against them, but it is the reason they can’t sustain an attack, nor do they want to.

They want to create that transitional moment, and then either get a shot off or lose the ball. They want to lose the ball to then create another transitional moment because you can’t counter if you have the ball.

This is why they perform better in games where the matchup is even or the opposition is considerably better than them. If they have qualitative superiority, they can’t counter because they have most of the possession, and they don’t have many solutions to defeat lesser opponents.

Match: Brentford 1-1 Crystal Palace, 18 August 2024