Match preview: Brentford vs Ipswich Town

Brentford return to the Gtech Community Stadium on Saturday (kick-off 3pm) and welcome Ipswich Town to west London for Gameweek 9 of the Premier League.

The Bees are unbeaten on home soil this season – they have beaten Crystal Palace, Southampton and Wolves – while Kieran McKenna’s Tractor Boys have picked up four points so far, losing 2-0 to Everton last time out.

Analysis, team news, match officials and more. Here’s everything you need to know before meeting in West London.

Pre-game analysis

Richard Cole, playmaker statistics: Brentford have to be careful of counterattacks against Ipswich

Brentford have the perfect opportunity to bounce back from disappointment at Old Trafford as the Bees host Ipswich Town.

Saturday’s game will be the first ever meeting between the two teams in the top flight, with the Tractor Boys having not won away to Brentford since a 4-2 win in the Championship in December 2014.

Now, almost ten years later, Brentford are confident that something like this won’t happen again – especially given the different starts between the two teams.

Ipswich are one of four teams yet to record a league win after eight games played, but remain above the relegation zone thanks to the four draws Kieran McKenna’s team have managed so far.

Ipswich have scored just six goals in the league, with only 18th-placed Crystal Palace scoring fewer (5).

However, half of those goals have come on the counterattack, something Brentford will have to be wary of this weekend. Only Tottenham Hotspur have conceded more goals (7) than Ipswich in the Premier League so far this season.

The threat from Ipswich is also likely to come from the left flank through Leif Davis deliveries. Only seven players have managed to make more precise crosses than Davis (11) – although one of them is Bryan Mbeumo (13).

In fact, Davis also ranks in the top eight in key passes this season. The 24-year-old chipped in 20 for his team (the same number as Bernardo Silva and Jarrod Bowen), with only five players doing more.

Another threat is striker Liam Delap. The 21-year-old, the son of former Stoke City player Rory, has scored four of Ipswich’s six goals this season, including three in his last three games.

A small group of just nine players have bagged more than Delap this season – including the aforementioned Mbeumo, whose Premier League tally is equal to Ipswich’s at six.

The former Manchester City academy youngster also sits sixth in the table for exceeding his xG (a positive difference of +1.63 xG), meaning his finishing ability cannot be underestimated by the Brentford defense.

In addition to Ipswich’s key players, Brentford must also continue to tenaciously defend set pieces.

A significant proportion of Ipswich’s tries this season (35 out of 75 attempts) have come from set pieces, meaning Nathan Collins, Ethan Pinnock and co will have to be at their best once again.

While hosting a team who have yet to win this season seems like a good way for Brentford to continue their climb up the table, the Blues are still quite capable of winning on their first visit to the Gtech Community Stadium. to cause problems.

Scout report

Dan Long, Sky Sports: Ipswich aim for their first win since their remarkable return to the Premier League

Ipswich’s rise in recent years has been nothing short of phenomenal.

Looking back, it seems as if relegation from the Championship – after 17 consecutive seasons of second tier football – in 2019 was a necessary evil to make way for what was to come.

Between elimination from the Premier League in 2001/02 and relegation to League One in 2018/19, the Tractor Boys reached the play-offs three times – and all three chances ended in the semi-finals.

Most of the time they experienced unhappy, unsuccessful years that simply required a change.

Initially, neither Paul Lambert nor his successor Paul Cook were able to get Ipswich above mid-table in League One.

But everything changed when Kieran McKenna stepped in as the latter’s replacement in December 2021.

Away from the spotlight, the young manager’s ideas and energy played a major role in the club gaining automatic promotion from League One in 2023 and from the Championship earlier this year.

It is difficult to describe the way in which his team managed the latter – and almost edged out Leicester City to the title, especially without making any major changes to the squad – and returned to the top flight after a 22-year absence.

It’s been a wild ride; Ipswich collected 96 points and became only the sixth club since the Championship was renamed in 2004/05 to score 90 or more goals.

McKenna has remained loyal to many players involved in successive promotions. However, promotion to the best league in the world required new signings, and – according to a Sky Sports Report – the club spent £124m to bolster their ranks in the summer. At just £1m they had the second highest net spend in the Premier League after Brighton.

As cliche as it may sound, the most important move Ipswich made ahead of the new season was tying McKenna to a new contract until 2028. There was interest from several clubs – and that will undoubtedly come back. But at the moment he is heavily invested in this project.

He, the players and the fans have been used to winning regularly in recent years, so there is still a lot of patience to be had given the start of the season.

Firstly, it was by no means catastrophic. Facing Liverpool and Man City in the first two games was of course tough and four draws in a row – against Fulham, Southampton, Brighton and Aston Villa – is nothing to sneeze at.

They have taken the lead in three games but the hunt for an elusive first Premier League win since April 24, 2002 (1-0 against Middlesbrough) continues.

Second favorites to avoid relegation at the time of writing, Ipswich will be hoping the wait isn’t too long.

In the dugout

Kieran McKenna

London-born Kieran McKenna grew up in County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland but returned to the English capital in 2002 when he joined Tottenham as a 16-year-old.

A trained midfielder, he played for Northern Ireland at U19 and U21 level, but a persistent hip injury unfortunately prevented him from ever playing in the first team – either at club or international level – and led to his early retirement in 2009 22 years.

After completing his A-levels with Spurs, McKenna applied to study sport and exercise science at Loughborough University and graduated in 2012.

Shortly afterwards he returned to Tottenham as head of performance analysis at the academy, before later taking charge of the club’s under-18s.

In the summer of 2016, he moved to Manchester United in the same role and won the Premier League Northern Division title in the 2017–18 season before being selected – alongside Michael Carrick – in the first team as assistant to José Mourinho.

After the Portuguese left Old Trafford, he worked under Ole Gunnar Solskjær and Ralf Rangnick.

McKenna was just 35 when he was appointed Ipswich manager in December 2021 and almost three years later he already has 150 games under his belt as manager.

The game plan

With Stuart Watson, head football writer East Anglian Daily Times And Ipswich Star

Stuart Watson, Chief Football Writer East Anglian Daily Times And Ipswich Star, explains how Kieran McKenna expects to line up his Ipswich side at the Gtech Community Stadium on Saturday:

“Under McKenna it was a flexible 4-2-3-1 all the time.

“Leif Davis, the left-back, has provided an incredible amount of assists in League One and the Championship and he is extremely fit so he just moves up and down the entire left side so anyone playing on the left wing will do so tends to stock up.”

“They have two tens and whoever plays on the right wing plays very high and has the freedom to play almost like an additional striker at times.

“So it’s a basic 4-2-3-1 shape but with a lot of flexibility in it. They have some injury problems in defense at the moment and the two defenders who started the season in great form are out; One of them is Axel Tuanzebe, who suffered a serious injury while washing dishes and almost lost his thumb.

“Then there was a bit of a surprise at the weekend when Jacob Greaves wasn’t on the team list. He was part of Hull’s Championship team of the year last season and had established himself very well in the Premier League, so losing him is a huge blow.

“Finding the right replacements and the right balance will be a problem in this game.”

Last starting eleven in the Premier League against Everton (4-2-3-1): Muric; Burgess, O’Shea, Woolfenden, Davis; Morsy, Phillips; Burns, Hutchinson, Clarke; Delap

Read our full interview with Stuart Watson here

Match officials

Smith returns to Gtech for the second time this season

Referee: Lewis Smith

Assistants: Scott Ledger and Matthew Wilkes

Fourth official: Robert Jones

VAR: Peter Bankes

30-year-old referee Lewis Smith is the man in the middle on Saturday, returning to the Gtech Community Stadium for the second time this season after officiating the Bees’ Carabao Cup game against Leyton Orient last month.

He made his Premier League debut earlier this year, becoming the youngest player to take charge of a game in the competition last season.

Smith has refereed 12 games in the Premier League and EFL this season, issuing 43 yellow cards and two red cards.

He also took charge of some games in Japan in March as part of an exchange program with the J-League.

Last meeting

Brentford 2 Ipswich Town 0 (Sky Bet Championship, 10 April 2019)

Neal Maupay and Ollie Watkins scored within eight first-half minutes as Brentford ended a five-game winless run.

Collin Quaner should have given Ipswich the lead moments before Maupay’s opener but hit the post as he tried to lift the ball over Luke Daniels.