Squaring up to the only Premier League team to do the double over them last season, Manchester City visit the Gtech Community Stadium for fixture with Brentford. The Citizens cruised past Burnley 3-1 in the midweek round of fixtures, while Thomas Frank’s side could not make the most of an early lead against Tottenham Hotspur, losing 3-2 against their London rivals.
Another half-hour was not enough for Brentford to make the net bulge a third time, though, and the comical feud between Maddison and Maupay – which quickly spilled over to social media – made more headlines than the engrossing action on the field. For Thomas Frank and his red and white crop, defeat to Spurs represented a harsh reality check in the wake of their uplifting 3-2 win over Nottingham Forest on January 20, and the Bees are still dancing with the devil at the wrong end of the table, languishing in 15th with a three-point gap to the drop zone.
An abysmal spell of winter form has seen the Bees prevail in just one of their last nine fixtures across all tournaments, and not since overcoming Chelsea at the end of October have Frank’s men recorded a clean sheet in any competition, although only Arsenal have kept them out in a Premier League home game so far in 2023-24.
As well as marking their eighth victory on the bounce across all tournaments, the routine beating of Burnley also represented a fourth Premier League maximum in a row for the holders, who remain sandwiched in between Liverpool and Arsenal in second place before their title rivals engage in a titanic Emirates clash on Sunday.
Keeping just one clean sheet from their last 11 Premier League matches is still a minor blot on Pep Guardiola’s notebook, but the 53-year-old’s side have now struck at least two goals in each of their last six top-flight contests and have not lost in 11 Monday night battles with the Catalonian in charge, winning nine of them.
However, the Bees’ sting proved too potent for City to overcome last season, as Brentford came away from the Etihad with a 2-1 victory before a 1-0 West London success on the final day of the campaign, but Guardiola is yet to suffer three-straight losses against the same opponent in his managerial career.
