Farke hits out at referee Ward as Norwich are held at Brentford

Posted Wednesday, January 02, 2019 by PA

Norwich boss Daniel Farke launched a stinging attack on referee Gavin Ward after his side’s hard fought 1-1 draw at Brentford.

He accused the match official of denying his side three penalties in a feisty affair that also left the home fans furious at his inconcistency.

“We had two penalty shouts and another 50-50 situation but when there are three appeals for a penalty you expect to get one,” said Farke.

“When you watch things back it’s quite obvious, but I am sure Gavin Ward was doing his best. When so many things go against you a draw is a good result, but I’m annoyed that we were more or less not allowed to win today.”

Timm Klose’s late header cancelled out Julian Jeanvier’s first half opener in a game that saw seven yellow cards for a string of niggly challenges.

Farke said: “It was a pretty entertaining and very high quality game of good Championship football with both sides trying to dominate possession and create a lot.

“For the fans, it was entertaining and for us it was a good point because this is tough place to come and in recent weeks Brentford have been increasingly hard to score against.”

“It’s especially difficult when you are behind early in the game because Brentford are good on counter attack. When you have key players missing before the game and lose more during the game you have to think it’s a good point but I am still annoyed about some of those decisions against us.

“When you get decisions against you it is tough to win a game, but despite that we had opportunities at the end to win the game.”

Brentford Head Coach Thomas Frank says his side’s new-found resilience is down to hard work and “psychological tweaks” on the training ground.

“That’s all that is different between now and five or six games ago. We’ve spent a lot of time talking to the boys individually and working on the mindset and attitude as well as the football side of things,” he said.

“I was very happy with the performance, especially the first half when we were the better team, created clear chances and carried out the press and counter press to impose ourselves on the game.”

He hailed the attitude, concentration, mentality and work rate of his side as “spot on”, apart from a brief lapse that allowed Norwich to gain a toehold in the game.

“Otherwise it was a top performance on and off the ball and we created clear chances while theirs were only half chances, but the find margins didn’t quite go our way today,” he said.

Brentford have now taken six points from the Christmas programme and Frank added: “I think our performances have deserved more, but we have changed the system, changed things psychologically and we’ve had some very tough fixtures.

“Norwich had very few chances today and they are a top top team. Some of that is down to the return of Julian Jeanvier who has brought steel to the defence, but our results over Christmas have been down to the work put in by everyone in the squad.”