Brentford defeated Bournemouth 2-0 in the EFL Cup, with Fabio Carvalho and Igor Thiago sealing progression to the third round. Keith Andrews rotated the squad, giving first starts this season to Frank Onyeka, Kristoffer Ajer, and Aaron Hickey. Andrews praised multiple outstanding performances and warned that the rotation creates selection dilemmas ahead of the trip to Sunderland. He noted the challenge of three 90-minute games in a week and commended the group's commitment, togetherness, solidity and selfless play. Sunderland exited the cup on penalties to Huddersfield after a 1-1 draw, with Marc Guiu scoring his first Sunderland goal and several players earning valuable minutes.
We knew it'd be a tough test for obvious reasons; it was probably as tough of a draw that we could've got away from home against a very good Premier League team, I wanted to utilise the squad this week because they deserve it. It doesn't really surprise me, to be honest, it's what I fully expected; a performance to make me think about things going into the game against Sunderland. There were some outstanding performances.
Playing three 90-minute games in the space of a week was always going to be difficult for everybody to do so early in the season, and I think you could see the commitment levels and the togetherness of the group was there in abundance. It's a carry on from the other day [against Villa] in terms of that solidity and that selfless nature of how we played the game.
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