Danis Salman, Brentford’s youngest-ever league debutant, looks back on his 11 seasons in west London.

The castle crest was used by Brentford from 1975 to 1993.

Promotion was won twice during that period, from the Fourth to Third Division in 1977/78 and from the third to second tier in 1991/92. 

The other highlight was a run to the quarter-final of the FA Cup in 1988/89.

To celebrate the return of the castle crest on our 2022/24 second kit, we’re speaking with those who wore it best the first time around.

Next up is Danis Salman, the club’s youngest-ever league debutant who was inducted into the Brentford Hall of Fame in November 2014.

Salman is one of only 15 players to have made more than 300 appearances for the Bees since the club joined the Football League.

After bursting onto the scene as a fresh-faced 15-year-old in 1975, Danis Salman made quite a name for himself at Brentford over the course of the next decade.

He was part of the team that won promotion from the Fourth Division under Bill Dodgin Jnr in 1977/78; appeared for England at the Under-18 European Championship in 1978; still holds the record as the Bees’ youngest-ever league debutant; and is one of only 15 men to have made more than 300 appearances in red and white since the club joined the Football League.

But it could have all been so different.

Shortly before he joined Brentford, Salman was invited to a three-day trial at Arsenal’s London Colney training ground, where more than 250 of the most promising talents from across the country would compete for six apprenticeships. He was the Gunners’ first pick.

Then a phone call changed everything.

“A week before I signed, I got a phone call from John Docherty who I got on really well with. He was my coach at QPR when I was 11 and had just become manager of Brentford. I honestly didn’t know of Brentford at the time,” Salman recalls.

“He told me to come down for a pre-season friendly against a Non-League side, so I took my boots, played and we won 5-0. I played well and he did the old spiel about getting more opportunities. At the time, my parents didn’t speak English and I had no one to talk to, but I really liked John and he convinced me to sign for Brentford.

“When I told Arsenal, they went absolutely ballistic. They got me up to Highbury, into the boardroom and asked why I was going to Brentford instead. They thought I had been offered a lot of money to go there and I hadn’t - I just felt that it would probably be the best thing for me.

“Arsenal offered to give me a guaranteed first-year pro after the apprenticeship and £35,000, but one of their directors was really angry and having a go at me, which frightened me more than anything else.”

Feeling comfortable and content in his environment was one of the more important factors for Salman – and, in Docherty, he found the ideal manager to harness his talent.

“Our relationship was incredible,” he says.

“As a manager, John was quite a quiet man; very philosophical, very thoughtful and he chose his words very well. He knew I was a really good footballer, and, for my age, I was very strong, very quick and very mobile.

“Apart from him liking me as a player, he also knew how I worked best. He just had a certain way of talking to me that made me want to run through brick walls for him.

“The unfortunate thing was that he was only at Brentford for a short time. The reason why I went to Brentford was because of him and he left not even a year later.

“Years later, he came back to Brentford as Frank McLintock’s assistant and then he went to Millwall and took me there. He got a lot of player for not a lot of money, if I do say so myself!”

Salman signed for Brentford as an apprentice in September 1975 and, by 15 November - aged 15 years and 248 days old – he was called up to the first team for the first time, having never so much as trained with them.

It all happened in a flash. One minute, he was an ordinary schoolboy, the next he was making history.

“I got a knock on the door when I was at home on my own and the guy showed me a badge and I’m almost certain he was from The Sun. I really wasn’t clear about what he was doing there, but he wanted to have a chat and he asked whether I would mind getting some school books out to pretend to do some writing as he took a few pictures.

“He then said something about the fact I might be playing against Watford, and I really didn’t take much notice. I went back to school, then I got a phone call to say they were picking me up in a taxi to take me to get to Brentford and I was going to be in the squad to play!

“I got down to the ground, went into the changing rooms and Eddie Lyons told me where to sit – I was sat there with my school uniform on with all these big blokes. Jackie Graham came and sat next to me and had a little word asking how I was and if I played, not to worry, just to go out and enjoy myself and if anything happened he’d be straight there. He made me feel really welcome.

“That game is such a blur, though. I played a full game at centre-half not long after that and John Doch got me in his office during the week and told me I played really well and that I even surprised him because I ended up trying to have a fight with some 6ft 4in centre-forward!

“When I was out on a football pitch, I didn't feel any different. I didn't feel inferior or that I shouldn't be there. Playing with men meant that, at 15, I was probably more like a 20-year-old in my attitude and the way I wanted to do things.”

By the time Salman signed his first professional contract in the summer of 1977, he was only 17, yet had been part of the first-team picture for the best part of two seasons, albeit not always as a regular fixture in the team.

He had done his fair share of graft to earn that first contract and even admits to spending several nights sleeping on a treatment table under a heat lamp at Griffin Park in order to get the weekend’s kit washed, rather than travelling home to Barking and then back again. “I don’t think anyone would have been happy about that!”

The 1977/78 season will always be remembered for promotion from the Fourth Division as well as the season Salman began to nail down a starting spot, but, again, he admits memories from that time all blend into one because there was simply so much going on in his career.

A significant milestone was the aforementioned international recognition he received in 1978, playing in an England Under-18 team that included Tony Gale, Vince Hilaire and Terry Fenwick. It took a strongly worded letter to get him there, though.

“Dan Tana was chairman and apparently, though I didn’t know, he had complained to the FA that I’d been playing regularly for two years and that no one had even bothered to come and have a look at me. I then got a letter to have a trial at Fulham against an England Select side before the team was picked to go to the tournament in Poland.

“I played really well and got selected and I think I was probably one of the only ones from the lower leagues because they don’t really select from there, but very few of the others had played any first-team football at all.

“With that and promotion, it had been quite a successful season all round and when I came back, I think Brentford were offered about £350,000 for me by a couple of clubs – a lot of money in those days – but they wanted a lot more than that.”

He continued as a key part of the Brentford team that held its own in the Third Division over the next four seasons and was approaching 150 appearances in all competitions by the time he turned 20 in March 1980.

Salman’s consistency once again piqued interest in early 1982. He was aware of it and, following a conversation with Fred Callaghan, thought he had struck a gentleman’s agreement.

“Fred told me that, if we didn’t get promotion, he’d let me go,” Salman explains.

“We didn’t get promotion, so I said I wanted to progress as I was young, had played a lot of games and I thought it would be good for me to find a new challenge. I almost left for Stoke – who were in the top flight - but he wasn’t happy about that, even though he promised he would let me go.”

His situation worsened shortly afterwards when he ruptured his thigh, which would eventually keep him out for the entirety of the 1982/83 campaign, bar one match.

“After two weeks of treatment, I think Fred was asking the doctors if I was faking after the Stoke move broke down, so he made me go training – it wasn’t right, and I tore it again. This went on week after week and the scar tissue started to build up. The club doctor said he couldn’t see anything wrong with me, but I wasn’t hobbling for nothing!

“Eventually, they took me to a specialist and there was this great big lump in my thigh. He took one look, put me in a particular position, pulled my leg down and I absolutely screamed. I needed surgery and so I ended up with an eight-inch scar.

“If they’d left it alone and let it heal, I’d have been playing in three or four weeks, but I missed a whole season for no reason at all and through no fault of my own because people felt I was faking an injury because I’d wanted to leave the club at one point. I never got one apology.”

It was not until 1984/85, under Frank McLintock – and his assistant Docherty - that Salman became a regular once again and, over the course of what would prove to be his final two seasons, he made 103 appearances in all competitions.

At the end of 1985/86, Docherty left for Millwall – and he wanted to take Salman across the capital with him. The Lions were a Second Division team on the rise and having been denied the chance to leave in the past – and been on the same wage for six years – it seemed natural for the 26-year-old to make the move.

“I was one of the top players at Brentford, according to everybody, I was playing week in, week out, I'd been there since I was a kid and I felt, personally, while I was still playing okay, I was becoming stale and that's why I wanted to move on and better myself.

“The club wanted me to stay and wanted loads of money for me, but why wasn’t I getting a rise? I’d go in to sign my contract, they’d say there was no more money and I’d always just sign it. That’s one of the main reasons I left.

“That came back to haunt Frank and the club because you were allowed to sign for a club when your contract had run out, but the tribunal would then fix the fee. The most important part was how much they valued the player. I was asked my main reason for leaving and I explained my career to that point, that I loved the club, but I’d been on the same money and they couldn’t believe that was the case.

“That’s the reason why my fee was so small. Brentford got £20,000 – Frank went mad and asked how he could replace a guy that could played in every position for £20,000.

“Before I went to the tribunal, the club sent a cab driver to my house with a new contract and a big rise in my wages. I didn’t sign it because it was too late. Why didn’t they offer me that in the first place?”

By the time he left, with 371 appearances under his belt, Salman was, unbelievably, just 26-years-old.

If he hadn’t already justified his reason for leaving west London, it was proven in his second season at The Den, when he was part of Docherty’s Millwall team that reached the First Division for the first time. He later spent time at Plymouth – where he lives to this day – while also spending short spells at Peterborough and Torquay.

There was talk of a fairytale return to Brentford at the start of the 1990s, but fairytale returns do not come around often in football, as he would find out.

“I was going to come back and I really was desperate to because I spent a lot of time at Brentford and I remember wanting, a long time before that, to come back and finish my career there.

“I got a call from Steve Perryman, who was desperate to have me, and I said I’d love to come back and finish where I started. But just before I came to talk to him, he left the club. I was so upset.”

If that does not tell you how Salman feels about his decision to join Brentford instead of Arsenal all those years earlier, nothing will.

“One of the main reasons I went to Brentford was because when I played in that pre-season friendly at the start, I went into the bar afterwards and it was like being at a family party – everyone was so nice and friendly,” he adds.

“When I went to Arsenal, I hadn’t met any of the players, but with Alan Ball and Liam Brady there, it was great for a young player to see players like that train. But being a family orientated kid, Brentford just felt more comfortable for me, so my feeling towards the club has always been one of closeness.

“I look back at my time there with fond memories. I was one of those people that would stay behind and talk to anybody that wanted to talk to me, sign anything anybody wanted me to sign. If I was asked to go to a hospital, I'd go; if I was asked to go and see somebody at school, I would do that.

“I got on very well with the supporters; I think everybody recognised I was one of those players that would just go out on the field and run my heart out.

“When I got inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2014, which was a great honour, I remember standing on the stage and saying that I got to the big time eventually and that I was sure, in the next few years, Brentford would too – and they have.

“I’m just sad that I wasn’t a part of it because I look at the club and see how well run it is. It’s a shame I couldn’t finish off my career there, but I’m so happy to see where they are now.”