The last four seasons at Brentford Football Club have been eventful, to say the least.

168 league games. 76 league wins. 274 league goals scored. Two visits to Wembley Stadium. Nine west London derby victories. One promotion. Two stadiums. One manager. Two styles of football.

The last two entries on that list are undoubtedly the most interesting and, probably, the most important.

Brentford head coach Thomas Frank has transformed the way his side have played football since promotion to the Premier League. And it's been to great effect.

Despite impressing with a possession-based style of play for two seasons, Frank, perhaps controversially at the time, restyled his Brentford side ahead of their first season in the top flight for 74 years.

Something which now, in hindsight, can be labelled as ingenious.

Frank explains: "In the Championship, we scored the most goals two years in a row. We had one of the highest possession stats in the division. We dominated games.

“We would like to do the same in the Premier League, but we need to take into consideration there are a few relatively big clubs in this league!

"We are finding our feet in the best league in the world. We are developing a way of playing that is a little bit more pragmatic.

“We want to go towards still being more dominant on the ball - having 60/70 per cent possession would be nice, but it's not essential for me.

“If we can top the charts for things like highest xG per shot and shots on target percentage, then I’m more than happy.

“We've done that because we are focused on creating crosses early from good positions, as well as playing balls in behind at the right time.

“We're doing that because we are talking and training a lot about making each chance bigger.

“Playing in front, in front, in front, in front is nice, but where is the breakthrough? That, merged together with having more passes in the right areas, is the way we are going.

“We would like to add that layer to really be aware of Brentford 1.0 when going towards Brentford 2.0.

“People sometimes can be drawn towards how we need to develop, but let's remember our foundations. Let’s remember what we're really good at, keep that, and then add layers. That's what it's about.”

When asked if he could outline the main principles and values of his current philosophy, "aggressive and front-footed" are the two words that Frank selects.

Brentford averaged 43.3 per cent possession this term (16th); only Liverpool (1,152) and Manchester City (1,078) played more accurate long balls than the Bees (1,009) this season; and they won more aerial duels (668) than any other team in the division.

But, as Frank alluded to, his side dominated games in the Championship.

During the 2020/21 campaign, they averaged 54.2 per cent possession (fifth highest in the division) and 382 short passes per game (sixth). The Bees also scored 168 goals across their final two seasons in the second tier.

That is the way that Frank would like his teams to play football, in an ideal world, which stems from his time back home in Denmark.

Frank discusses: “I got the label of having a tiki-taka and possession-based team in Denmark. It’s always been the offensive part of football that has interested me the most; how we set the team up to score goals or dominate the ball.

“It was inspired, first and foremost, by Morten Olsen, the former national team coach. He coached them for 15 years, as well as at Brondby and Ajax as well. He was also one of Denmark’s greatest players ever.

“He was very ahead of his time, the way he set up the national team and Ajax when he was there. He was a big inspiration, in terms of playing with wide wingers, playing with no.9s and no.10s that are flexible - I just thought, ‘Wow’.

“I had an Under-15 team at that time and just completely copy and pasted it! I then became the youth national team coach for Denmark for five years and that was our style of play. It was very possession-based and tiki-taka.

“I then took over Brondby and, because I had that brand of football, that was all that everyone saw. Any time we put 10 passes together, people would say, ‘Oh, he only wants to do that’.

“But, no, we also pressed hard and we were very good at set pieces.”

And they are two key fundamentals that Frank has brought to Brentford, especially since promotion to the Premier League.

According to Opta, the Bees ended the season with 16 goals from set-pieces (only Liverpool scored more), and finished joint-top of goal-ending high turnovers (a goal-ending sequence that starts in open play and begins 40m or less from the opponent's goal) with nine.

And the Dane mentions the pressing and set-pieces, as well as the Bees' ability to be brave when they switch to 'Plan B', especially against the top teams in the division, as elements of his side's performances that he has been most proud of.

When asked what he believes Brentford have excelled at this campaign, he responds: "One, in general, has been the aggressive high pressure against almost every opponent.

“Of course, not throughout whole 90 minutes, but the mindset, the ability, the braveness and the front-footedness from the players to do that every game, I liked that a lot, that’s a big thing.

"Another big thing is, when we've been down, we have the Plan B where we’ve been offensively minded and had a lot of offensive players on the pitch, especially against good teams.

“It made me think, ‘Wow, that can actually really happen, it works’, so I also liked that.

“We know that we are very, very good on set pieces, we're also very good defending high and low, but I liked the extra layers we put on this season against teams, especially at home, but also some away from home where we are dominating more.

“Two go-to performances for me, going into next year, was at home against West Ham and at home to Aston Villa.

“West Ham: I think we had almost even possession, but we had 24 shots compared to four. We were better on the ball, more dominant on the ball, but we were also earlier going in behind, earlier putting the cross into the box, whilst still controlling the game in their half for big spells of the game.

“Aston Villa: we were so aggressive in the high pressure and then, when we had the ball, we were calm and composed. Again, in behind at the right time, not in the first pass, but after these three/four/five passes: that's the moment. I liked that.”

Those two performances and results, in particular, came at the back end of the season, amidst the Bees' incredible push for a European qualification spot - something which they ultimately fell two points short of.

But, despite narrowly missing out on qualifying for the Europa League or Europa Conference League, it certainly wasn't results against the division's 'big six' that hindered their push for the top seven.

The west Londoners picked up the joint-most points in the division against Manchester City, Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham (21 - the same as City, having played two games more against those sides).

That included home victories against United and Liverpool, away wins at Chelsea and Tottenham and the double over City - the recently-crowned Premier League champions and potential treble winners.

And the question on everyone's lips: just how did Brentford do it?

“We’ve found a way that is difficult to play against," Frank describes.

“We you know that if we go toe-to-toe with them, it will definitely minimise our chances to win.

“Now we go toe-to-toe in a different way that is a bit more defensive but, hey, you're playing against six of the best teams in the world.”

He added: “In general, every game we go into we believe can win. We believed we could go to the Etihad and win. If you asked the players after the tactical meeting and then days leading up towards that game, they believed we can win.

“We knew it would be unbelievably difficult, they’d be huge favourites, but we believed we could win.”

One man that scored twice that day against Pep Guardiola's side was Ivan Toney, who netted a 98th-minute winner to secure all three points against the Mancunians in November.

Frank will be unable to name Toney in his squad until 16 January 2024, with striker receiving an eight-month ban from all football and football-related activity after he admitted breaches of FA Rule E8, relating to placing bets on football.

Many wonder how the head coach will set his side up without the talismanic centre-forward, who scored 20 goals in the Premier League this term.

When asked if he would have to drastically change his system without Toney, he explains: “I don't think we have to change at all, almost. It'll just be tweaks.

“If you want that longer solution, goal kicks, for example, we have to find a different way.

"But, in open play, the pressing is the same, whether that’s Ivan, Yoane [Wissa] or Kevin [Schade]. The build-up is also the same, more or less, if we want to play in behind.

“We never really played for Ivan. A narrative has been created because we do that sometimes against the top six, but that's only 12 games; there are 26 games left that we definitely don't do it as much - that's not the plan.

“So the build-up is more or less the same, it's only the little tweaks with the longer solutions sometimes.”

After our chat at the Gtech Community Stadium, which is somewhere that Frank wants to "make the most difficult place to play in the world", the Dane is due to head back to his homeland for a well-deserved break after a relentless campaign.

While he'll technically be on holiday, Frank will always have football on his mind, with the ambitious head coach keen for his side to come back stronger next season, adding those all-important layers to their game.

“I haven’t set a target yet - we don't have positional targets or anything like that," he concludes.

"But I'll always have a presentation every year when we come back after the summer, discussing things like what we want to work on, what we want to develop, and what we want to keep doing well.

“That will be the first day when we get back, so I'll have that ready and we can speak more about that then. I have ideas, of course, but I want to be precise when I discuss them.

“But it's definitely about adding layers, to keep improving, to keep doing the best we can.

“There's a lot of players that I've been having five-minute chats over the week leading up to the summer, saying, ‘Okay, I want you to come back even stronger and play an even more important role next year’.”