Thomas Frank has hailed Manchester United’s new manager Erik ten Hag as “brilliant” and admitted he is looking forward to a reunion with Christian Eriksen when the Red Devils travel to Brentford on Saturday.
United suffered a surprise defeat to Brighton on the opening weekend of the season, after putting in a below-par performance at Old Trafford.
The Bees go into the match off the back of a comeback 2-2 draw at Leicester where they fought back from two goals behind to secure the point.
However, Frank does not believe there is a good time to play United.
“I don’t think there is an ideal time,” the Bees manager said.
“In general I don’t believe in if it’s a perfect situation to play them in or a bad situation to play them in.
“But one thing is for sure, they’ve got a new manager, a brilliant manager, I think he’s done a fantastic job in his earlier jobs, so they’re very interested in doing everything they can to make it a success with the players.
“They lost the first game, so if you lost a game the most common response (is) to really want to improve and do well. So it’s going to be extremely difficult tomorrow.
“I think there is no doubt that Manchester United are favourites, they can’t afford not to win against us tomorrow.
“Of course we believe and we will do everything we can to beat them and I believe we have a good chance.”
Eriksen spent half of last season at Brentford after being unable to play in Italy due to the implantable defibrillator fitted after his cardiac arrest at Euro 2020.
The Denmark international helped guide Brentford to Premier League safety before moving on to Old Trafford this summer, and Frank is looking forward to a reunion.
“I am looking forward to seeing him again,” Frank said.
“I look forward to giving him a hug and asking him how his family is, then I look forward to competing against him on the pitch and afterwards hopefully we will have three points and he will have zero, but we will see.
“I think no doubt with his qualities, you could also see it in the last game – I know he was used in two different positions during the game.
“Obviously his quality on the ball is key and we know we can’t give him too much time because he can see the ball between lines, he can see the ball behind and has the quality to put it on a string for any player.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here