Thomas Frank: Brentford’s goalscoring form is unreal

Thomas Frank praised the “unreal” form of his free-scoring Brentford side after they romped to an exhilarating 4-2 win over Newcastle at the Gtech Stadium.

It was the fourth time in five home matches that the Bees had hit four or more goals as they moved level with Chelsea on 31 as the Premier League’s joint-highest scorers this season.

A seventh win in eight home games was earned thanks to goals during a pinball first half from Bryan Mbeumo and Yoane Wissa, who had their efforts cancelled out by two Newcastle equalisers, before Nathan Collins and Kevin Schade settled the encounter in atrocious weather conditions.

“To be able to keep scoring, in a way is a little bit unreal, but I try to enjoy it,” said Frank, whose team climbed to sixth.

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“The number of goals we’ve scored in the league, I don’t think any of us understand how crazy good that is.”

Mbeumo’s opener came after he received a wonderful pass from Christian Norgaard then skipped beyond Lewis Hall and fired into the top corner.

Alexander Isak headed his seventh of the season to level things, then Wissa collected a woeful loose ball from Harvey Barnes to lash Brentford back in front.

Barnes made amends to make it 2-2 after the hosts gave him room inside the box to turn and finish, but Newcastle were architects of their own downfall once again in the 56th minute when Collins was allowed to reach goalkeeper Mark Flekken’s long ball to finish for 3-2.

Schade scored his fourth goal in seven days in stoppage time to ensure Brentford squeaked ahead of Brighton on goals scored, as Eddie Howe rued his team’s failure to build on Wednesday’s 3-3 draw with leaders Liverpool.

“Very disappointed with how we defended today,” said Howe. “The four goals we conceded we’ll look back on with real regret. It was collective mistakes for all of the goals.

“Especially the third goal. We fought back really well from conceding twice, the game was very much in the balance in that moment. But the third goal was really disappointing from our perspective.”

Newcastle were left slumped in 12th having conceded 10 goals in their last four.

“That’s the frustration, because before that we looked tight at the back, the issues were at the other end of the pitch,” said Howe. “Now we’ve scored five in two games and looked a really good attacking team, some of our attacking work was really strong today.

“Lo and behold we then we go and concede seven in two games from nowhere really. It’s difficult to work out because structurally we’ve been fine but there were a lot of individual errors today.

“We’ve got work to do in a lot of different areas. There’s a very good team in there, I’ve got no doubts, but we haven’t shown it consistently enough, we haven’t delivered it anywhere near enough for my liking.

“A period of reflection and a period of work, then we’ll try to fight back.”