Article #4273

A time when these clubs were Third Division mainstays may be a distant, chintzy memory now that both are upwardly mobile, model organisations but Bournemouth have still not beaten Brentford in the Premier League. For the south-coast club with very different horizons in 2025, this was a most costly defeat.

If Thomas Frank’s hopes of taking his team into Europe already relied on a collision of coefficients, coincidences and collapses then Bournemouth’s fade has come at a bad time. To repeat the pattern of their recent slide, Andoni Iraola’s team lost their early flow and were then sunk by the set-piece expertise that brought goals for Yoane Wissa and Christian Nørgaard. “Small margins,” said Iraola. “But when that’s happening in every game, we need to improve in both boxes.”