Thomas Frank hails ‘close to complete’ Brentford performance despite late setback against Aston Villa

Frank’s team missed a host of chances and eventually took a second-half lead through Ivan Toney’s 20th goal of the season, but failed to put the game to bed and were punished by Douglas Luiz’s 87th-minute leveller.

The Bees had gone into the game on a run of three successive defeats, while Villa were among the division’s form sides having won five League matches on the spin.

However, it was the home side who were dominant throughout, with Villa boss Unai Emery conceding the result represented a “very good point” for the visitors, while Frank was left to wonder how his team had not taken all three.

“Isn’t that the beautiful thing about football?” Frank said. “Things like that can happen. Of course, when you sit here and don’t win I have a few emotions in me and I try to control them. Part of it is the determination and drive to want to be better and keep going and in a moment like this they’re bubbling inside me.

“The calm, cool part of me looks at the performance and thinks it’s close to a complete performance except for a blip, three or four ricochet shots in 87th minute. [Before that] we’ve given one half-chance away to [Jacob] Ramsey against a team everyone is praising as absolutely fantastic. If you’re only leading 1-0 it can happen.”

Frank was forced to withdraw captain Christian Norgaard at half-time, but believes the midfielder suffered only a “minor injury” while Kevin Schade’s late substitution was the result of cramp.