Fulham and Brentford to test strong starts in historic derby full of intrigue

It’s been two years since Brentford and Fulham met in the Championship Play-Off Final at Wembley.

Then, as now, it appeared Brentford were the club in the ascendancy, playing swashbuckling football under Thomas Frank and certainly the romantics’ choice for promotion over a side who had been in the Premier League only a season earlier and, for much of it, stunk the place out.

So, it should serve as a warning to the Bees, as they head to Craven Cottage on Saturday on the back of a remarkable 4-0 thumping of Manchester United, that it was their west London rivals who left Wembley that August night with a 2-1 extra-time victory.

As it turned out, defeat delayed Brentford’s rise by only ten months before they avenged it with victory over Swansea, by which time Fulham had succumbed to a second successive yo-yo and were heading back into the second tier.

Now, it seems, the Bees’ perceived superiority is based on more than a feeling of momentum, with a weight of Premier League results, a new stadium and, for the club, unprecedented investment in the transfer market as evidence of their growth.

But Fulham, too, arrive at Saturday’s derby in ruder health than might have been anticipated, having taken a point off Liverpool on the opening weekend before missing out on three at Wolves only because of Aleksandr Mitrovic’s penalty miss.

The two sides’ unbeaten starts add a layer of intrigue to what is, remarkably, the first ever top-flight iteration of this particular west London derby, a rivalry that has flickered between intense periods of near-parity and others of prolonged dormancy throughout its history.

There has been only one meeting since that Play-Off Final clash, a League Cup fourth-round match a couple of months later, and fans have not been present at the fixture since December 2019, though that delay is nothing on the 16-year separation that ended in the Championship in 2014, after Brentford had been promoted from League One and Fulham relegated from the top-flight.

“Bees up, Fulham down,” was the famous Brentford chant of that era. The first half still seems apt, but Fulham have so far shown little sign they are destined for the drop once more.