Brentford Head Coach Dean Smith was in good spirits after Tuesday evening's 1-0 defeat to Peterborough United. Despite an early goal from Paul Taylor settling the contest, Dean was evidently impressed by the performances of his players across the full 90 minutes.

"I was more pleased than I was on Saturday to be honest, it was a better performance," said Dean, speaking to Bees Player after the full-time whistle. "How we didn't score, I don't know, with the chances we had but it was more like ourselves.

"It was a really good game for us again, we know they like to play football. I thought we dominated the ball for long periods today and created a lot of chances that I'd like to think we will be taking in a couple of weeks.

"I always talk about pre-season, and how results aren't important. Then you look at games we have played, the worst we played was against Bochum and we won that game."

In the fifth match of July, Brentford failed to find the net for the first time this pre-season. This isn't a reflection on the number of times goalkeeper Ben Alnwick was tested however, because he was certainly the busier of the two men at each end of the pitch. Dean thinks he saw enough to convince him that the team are heading in the right direction.

"I think we are certainly on the right track," said Dean. "I was a little bit worried on Saturday because I didn't think we were anywhere near the way we can play. We were too easy to get played through and we had no tempo about us. I put it down to four things on Monday morning; whether it was the heat, tiredness, laziness or tactical knowledge but I think looking at tonight's performance I can certainly put it down to heat.

"The only negative was that the ball didn't go into the back of the net. Lasse's had a couple of chances, Scotty got three or four and we got a few ricochets as well. It was a really good performance."

With several players nursing minor injuries, Dean opted to plug a few new faces into his starting eleven. Tom Field returned at left-back, with Jan Holldack replacing Maxime Colin on the other side. John Egan partnered Yoann Barbet in the centre as Harlee Dean was given a rest.

"As I said at the start of pre-season, my worst nightmare is picking up injuries and unfortunately we have a few little niggles. Andreas Bjelland has an adductor strain and Maxime pulled out this morning because he felt his calf slightly, among others. So we've got five or six players that aren't playing at the moment who would normally be in or around the First Team.

"It has given an opportunity to the likes of Jan Holldack, who I thought did really well at right-back and he's rarely played in that position for us. I've got four players who can play right-back and they are all injured at the moment so Jan went and played; we had two young lads as fullbacks and they didn't do badly."