Bees ‘counting the days’ to next season

Brentford manager Mark Warburton said his side were “counting the days” to the start of the Championship season after ending an historic campaign with a 2-0 win at home to Stevenage.

With promotion already secured, there was a carnival atmosphere at Griffin Park, where a crowd of more than 11,000 turned out to see Kevin O’Connor make his 500th Bees appearance and goals from Stuart Dallas and Alan Judge settle a one-sided game.

Led by sporting director Frank McParland, Brentford are looking to improve their squad during the summer – but Warburton again insisted there would not be wholesale changes.

He said: “Frank’s an expert in the area of recruitment. He’s very knowledgable with great links in the game and we’ll tap into that.

“But we’ve already got a strong squad and anyone we bring in has got to add value. We’ve got good harmony in the dressing room and want to maintain that.

“Ninety-eight days from today we play our first Championship game. It’s 14 weeks and we’re counting down the days.

“There are some great London derbies to look forward to and I’m delighted for the fans.”

Warburton, previously the club’s sporting director, was installed as manager for the rest of the season following Uwe Rosler’s departure for Wigan in December and is now set to sign a new contract.

“I’ll be discussing it with the club now. It was important to get to the end of the season and important to achieve our goal this year,” Warburton said.

He added: “The first half today was very nice but we didn’t really penetrate. Thankfully we looked a lot more dangerous in the second half.

“We’ve got 94 points and the players are a bit disappointed with that – the target was 100. It tells you a lot when players are disappointed with 94 points.”

Follow West London Sport on Twitter
Find us on Facebook