GTECH SAVVY

KEITH ANDREWS admits he was too busy in the summer to take notice of the doom-mongers writing off Brentford.

- BY JOHN CROSS

The Bees lost their manager Thomas Frank, captain Christian Norgaard and main goalscorers Bryan Mbeumo and Yoane Wissa, as well as their No.1 keeper Mark Flekken.

It looked a pretty tough task for Andrews to step up from set-piece coach to succeed Frank as Brentford boss - but they have been one of the best stories of this Premier League season.

Andrews, 45, is a hugely impressive character who has defied most preseason predictions which had Brent-ford going down as one of the three relegated clubs.

They are sitting pretty in fifth place going into this weekend and looking upwards.

Brentford is a super smart club, they had a succession plan in place with the expectation Frank might quit (as he did for Tottenham) and keeping Andrews (above) in the building was key.

Andrews said: "I didn't have much time to read a lot in the summer, as you can imagine.