Brentford gave Brighton a ‘leg up’, Andrews admits

Keith Andrews admitted Brentford contributed to their own downfall against Brighton.

A terrible mistake by Nathan Collins helped the Seagulls – who hadn’t scored in their previous three matches – to a 2-0 win.

The hosts were two down at half-time after goals from Diego Gomez and Danny Welbeck.

Gomez blasted in the rebound after Ferdi Kadioglu’s strike had come back off the crossbar.

And Collins’ gaffe immediately after coming on for the injured Aaron Hickey resulted in the second goal.

Pascal Gross’ ball into the box should have been routinely cleared by Collins, but the Irishman made a total hash of it and laid the ball on a plate for Welbeck, who fired home.

“We didn’t hit the levels we’ve been hitting pretty consistently,” admitted the Bees head coach.

“We were a little bit flat. And we certainly gave them a bit of a leg up in the first half. That’s where the game was lost.”

Brentford were better after the interval and Igor Thiago went close with a header, but they were unable to pull off a comeback.

Dango Ouattara’s overhead effort after being teed up by Thiago went over, and Brighton keeper Bart Verbruggen produced a fine save in stoppage time to prevent a Joel Veltman own goal.

“I think if we had taken one of those opportunities we could have made the last part of the game a lot more testing for them,” said Andrews.