The Brentford Connection

With Wycombe due to travel to Griffin Park to face Brentford on Saturday, Opta Index have looked at the performance of three players with links to both clubs.

Jason Cousins and Jamie Bates both began their careers at the Bees before making the move to Adams Park. The former has now been at Wanderers for almost 10 years, while the latter spent longer than that as a firm favourite at the west London club.

Martin Rowlands is from a younger generation of footballers. He was in the same Wycombe youth team as Alan Beeton, Andy Baird, Maurice Harkin, Gary Wraight and Aaron Patton, but former Chairboys boss John Gregory decided to dispose with him, forcing the midfielder to seek his fortunes at Farnborough Town.

Brentford snapped him up for a mere £45,000, and he could now command a fee of one million pounds quite easily. His first season in Division Two has been an undoubted success. Six goals and two assists from midfield is an excellent return, and with a pass completion rate approaching 70 per cent he certainly puts Cousins and Bates to shame.

The young schemer may have been booked five times, but feisty Cousins has seen red twice this campaign, doing himself and his club no favours. He and Bates have been effective for Lawrie Sanchez's team though, both notching a goal apiece and making almost 800 blocks and clearances at the back. 

Cousins has a slightly better pass completion than Bates, and it is worth noting that of the 11 players that started the match against Oxford United last week, he was the most accurate distributor, with a rate of 70 per cent.

Cousins is also the only person amongst the three to win more than half of the tackles he has attempted. Certainly no Wycombe fan would criticise the whole-hearted challenges that the swarthy defender regularly produces.

Both Wycombe and Brentford are likely to be in mid-table when the season ends in May but the winners of this game can still dream of a run towards the play-offs. Jamie Bates will miss an emotional return to Griffin Park because of an ankle injury, but Cousins always relishes the chance to play at the club that released him.

Similarly, Rowlands will be keen to show the Wycombe fans what he could have done in the Wanderers' midfield, after a rather lacklustre performance in Brentford's 2-0 defeat at Adams Park earlier in the season. 


Duncan Alexander

17 Feb 2000

Statistics courtesy of Carling Opta