Schade and Mbeumo’s retaken penalty earn Brentford vital win against Palace
Schade and Mbeumo’s retaken penalty earn Brentford vital win against Palace
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For Brentford, there was a measure of relief. It’s probably fair to say that the run of one win in nine games in which they went into this weekend was not representative of how they’d played but, still, it’s as well to stifle as early as possible any thought that they were going through a mid-winter slump similar to last season’s. Survival may not quite be mathematically assured but breaking the 30-point mark with 15 games remaining makes it almost certain they will be in the Premier League next season.
![[Brentford’s Kevin Schade took a blow to his head while scoring what proved to be the winning goal against Crystal Palace.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/ebac31bc5f29fa48f5b687b23689398792dfd13c/0_119_3813_2288/master/3813.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
After a slow start, the game was rather better than the conditions. It was an afternoon of truly filthy weather, a raw morning yielding to heavy rain, a blustery breeze, and skies of unremitting grey. It was an afternoon to be grateful for modern drainage, the pitch remaining slick and green throughout. With Brentford in a blancmange pink and aubergine away kit that evoked the once-aspirational bathroom in a seedy bedsit in which terrible things have happened from an 80s crime drama, the overall effect was of almost artistic bleakness, a sort of Croydon Noir.
![[Romain Esse races away in delight after scoring]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/a79a2992e4768c1cc2fee92542c2b68f960e707b/0_211_4280_2569/master/4280.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
At the heart of all true noir is the sense of the world as an implacable bureaucratic machine that inevitably crushes all human endeavour. And so it was that the game turned on a five-minute period of VAR-based drama midway through the second half; while Palace fans booed, the decisions taken were all, ultimately, probably correct, even if they wouldn’t necessarily have been given in a pre-VAR age. It began with Marc Guéhi smacking a clearance into Will Hughes, who thrust up his hands to protect his face. Perhaps that would anyway have eventually been given as a penalty, but Maxence Lacroix then caught the shin of Nathan Collins as he jumped for the bouncing ball. The referee Tony Harrington gave the penalty, and the VAR official Darren England confirmed his decision.
