Brentford have created an incredible piece of Premier League history in their 2-0 win over Champions League-chasing Nottingham Forest.
Forest went into the game knowing that a win over Thomas Frank’s side would move them back into third place in the Premier League table.
But they instead fell to a surprise home defeat through goals from Kevin Schade and Yoann Wissa either side of half-time.
Both goals came from long balls through the middle, with Forest failing to deal with the first and allowing Schade to fire home past Mats Selz.
And the second goal resulted from another misjudgment, with Mark Flekken’s goal kick floating over the head of Nikola Milenkovic and into the path of Wissa, who made no mistake with his subsequent effort.
That goal set a new Premier League record which, in the current era of teams largely playing safety first out from the back, not many would have thought possible.
Flekken’s assist means that there have been more direct assists from a goalkeeper (nine) than any other season in Premier League history.
Even more remarkably, perhaps, Flekken’s second assist of the season still means that he does not rank the highest among league goalkeepers in that particular statistic.
Manchester City‘s Ederson has four assists to his name this term, with Everton’s Jordan Pickford, Brighton’s Bart Verbruggen and Fulham’s Bernd Leno all having one each.
In previous years, Brentford would have had little chance of getting into Europe, as they are eight points behind seventh-placed Aston Villa with just four games remaining.
But England are set to be awarded an additional fifth Champions League qualification spot, meaning an eighth-placed finish could be enough to secure Conference League football as one of the various complex scenarios surrounding English teams and European qualification.
The Bees, who have never qualified for Europe in their history, remain in 11th following the Forest victory but are now only two points behind eighth-placed Fulham, while also having a better goal difference.
Speaking after the game, Brentford boss Frank told Sky Sports: “There’s a few things that need to happen, there’s a few teams ahead of us that need to get less points than us.
“We also probably need to have City win the FA Cup. So there’s a few things that we can’t control.
“What I would say is that, I knew before the Brighton game, and we talked about that openly, we need to win this if we want to have any dream about, first and foremost, finishing as high as we ever have in the Premier League. Which would be eighth.
“That gave us that extra boost. In the last 12 games, we have been extremely consistent. There’s another big game on Saturday which we need to do our best.”
