Brentford vs. Fulham Preview: Three questions

Cottagers Confidential: Thanks for beating QPR for us. It's always a pleasure to see them lose. That being said, which derby is the more important one to Brentford supporters? Would you rather beat Fulham or QPR?

Besotted: For the older fans, Fulham is definitely the team to beat. Harks back from the days when we were big rivals back in the 80s and in particular the 90s.

QPR was great and we enjoyed our day out at Loftus Road for sure. But you can tell the difference between when Brentford play QPR and Fulham… there is definitely a different intensity and Griffin Park will be jumping tonight regardless... whereas when we beat QPR at home last year (the first time we had played them for years) it was good… but didn’t match the intensity of the Jota last minute winner evening out (when we hadn’t played Fulham for years).

We do like that fact that (and I’m touching big wood here now) that Fulham haven’t beaten us in a league game in close on 20 years now.

CC: Fulham and Brentford seem to be in about the same place right now. If things break their way and they improve they have a chance to challenge for the playoffs, if they don't they'll likely be doing this all again next year. Give one reason why Brentford will make the playoffs and one reason why they won’t.

Besotted: Scott Hogan scores goals. He’s a great striker and a pain in the arry arris to defenders. If he doesn’t score goals, he’ll be peeling away bringing defenders with him and allowing another play in with a route in on goal. We have some very good players but we still admit we are work in progress. If Ryan Woods has a commanding game in midfield, you could be in a bit of a pickle. Plus our defence - bar a few hiccups against Newcastle and Barnsley - have been pretty rock solid all season. So if we can keep this all together and add to it in the January window we could sneak the playoffs.

If we lose Scott Hogan - which is a big possibility - then that will be a big blow to Brentford. Finding goalscorers who are potent for a decent price is hard. We normally have to bring them in raw then get them up to speed. And that takes time. So I’m not saying Hogan will go. But this is a silly league we are playing in at the moment. There is silly money flying around. And if Villa can play in excess of £12m for Kodija - who isn’t as good as Hogan - then anything can happen. Even if we keep Scott (which I think we will by the way), we need to strengthen our side. If we don’t we may struggle to keep up with the pack in the long term.

CC: The advanced stats say you are the 6th best team in the division. Your offense is second best in the league, only behind Newcastle. What makes this offense click and if you had to stop it, what would you do?

Besotted: Ha. If I were Fulham I wouldn’t bother try stop our offence. You may embarrass yourselves. I mentioned Hogan before. He’s a great goalscorer. But put two players on him leaves another man free. So it’s not as easy as all that. Add to the equation John Egan has been scoring goals from defence - something we haven’t had for years are years, it’s nice that we’re actually scoring from up front and at the back. Just need to pick up our goals from midfield now - which is where we used to be strong before. I predict today we’ll score at least one goal from midfield.

Score prediction: 2-0