Winning ugly may be something Cherries will learn from

Eddie Howe had a right to be a bit disappointed with the teams performance against Brentford, although that has to be balanced with how well the Bees played. "We weren't at out best, but we were resilient, disciplined, well... we lost our discipline actually, but we were disciplined enough and we ground out an ugly win," said Eddie. Reaching the very highest standards every game through will be a very difficult challenge and some times it is not such a problem when you win without being at your 'fluid best' in Eddie Howe's words. That could lead to a strong reaction that I hope we see in the Nottingham Forest game which comes up next.

Another captain's performance from Tommy.

I can't actually think of many games last season when AFCB looked in control as the clocked ticked down holding on to a narrow lead at home. Most of the time the team was either well ahead or well beaten by that stage although the QPR game was one when similar discipline was needed to hold out. You can call it ugly and just parking the bus, but it is part of the game that the players have to be able to do in this league because if you press on all the time there are too many good players who will catch you in possession when you are left open at the back. 

Steve Cook shrugged off a training knock to
keep his starting place next to Tommy Elphick. 

We saw Brentford catch players like Arter at times when he was trying to go forward but dallying on the ball and against better strikers, who can hit top corners from 25 yards out, Lee Camp will find he has more work to do than he did against Alex Pritchard or Nick Proscwitz. When Brentford did seek the equaliser though, there was a bit more confidence that AFCB would hold out from the crowd and some how I believe that is because the team currently sits on top of the table. When you are on top of the league there is a mentality that you are hard to beat and it comes from within side the players that demand it of each other to keep the clean sheet.

Not enough has probably been said about Tommy Elphick and Steve Cook who ensured that Brentford were kept out to long range shots for much of the afternoon. That is not to say that Brentford could have and probably should have got something from the game. AFCB held out though and that made it a pretty good win for our fans at the end of the day.