After five matches, this international break gives Fantasy Premier League (FPL) managers a chance to reflect on and grade the start of Keith Andrews’ Brentford.
In many cases, such recent history can help us look ahead and predict the upcoming Gameweeks.
RESULTS SO FAR
| GW | Result | Brentford’s xG | Brentford’s xGC |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brentford 3-0 Tottenham | 3.87 | 0.57 |
| 2 | Leeds 1-1 Brentford | 1.67 | 1.46 |
| 3 | Brentford 1-1 Sunderland | 1.21 | 1.71 |
| 4 | Bournemouth 2-2 Brentford | 0.50 | 1.75 |
| 5 | Brentford 3-0 Chelsea | 2.65 | 0.83 |
The Bees’ unbeaten, fourth-placed start has been headlined by two big home wins over Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea.
In between were three draws, a habit that derailed last season’s push for European football. Up in seventh for a while, they ultimately missed out on a first-ever qualification because of seven ties during their final 10 outings.
Looking at the expected goals (xG) and expected goals conceded (xGC) numbers above, the results looked mostly correct, apart from being slightly lucky to snatch a point at Bournemouth.
XG/XGC RANK V OTHER TEAMS
| Total | Rank v other clubs | |
|---|---|---|
| xG | 9.90 | 3rd |
| xGC | 6.31 | 4th |
LINE-UP LESSONS
Six players have featured in every Brentford lineup, but that doesn’t include summer signing Mamadou Sangare (£5.6m).
Pre-season hopes of him being the next Elliot Anderson (£6.3m), a set-and-forget cheap midfielder, were damaged by both Gameweek 3’s half-time removal and the Gameweek 5 benching.
Also removed in that early triple substitution were Dango Ouattara (£6.3m) and Michael Kayode (£4.6m). Neither started the following match, though the latter is back in.
Not Dango, though. He’s a victim of the increased squad depth caused by Jaidon Anthony‘s (£5.9m) arrival, only once exceeding 45 minutes.
In defence, injuries to Sepp van den Berg (£4.9m) and – more recently – captain Nathan Collins (£5.4m) have allowed Kristoffer Ajer (£4.5m) and Jannik Schuster (£4.5m) to pair up at centre-back. The sidelined duo are expected to very soon be fit, however, causing some medium-term uncertainty at the back.
SET-PIECE TAKERS
PakarPBN
A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.
In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.
The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.
