Christian Eriksen urges Brentford teammates: ‘Don’t go easy on me’

Christian Eriksen knew there might be question marks in the minds of his new Brentford teammates so he decided to address them head on. He felt more than ready for his first training session on Monday but did not want it to feel different for anyone else, so the previous night he told Thomas Frank he had something to say.

“There was a meeting before training and he said ‘welcome’ to me, and then I said a few words,” Eriksen said. “I said: ‘I’m here because everything has been cleared; if there are any questions you want to ask me, you can always ask me. Don’t go easy on me, because if there was any concern I wouldn’t be here.’ I told them that from the beginning.”

According to Eriksen, he was taken at his word. Nobody has held back over the past five days and that is exactly how he wants it. The trauma of his cardiac arrest last June during Denmark’s Euro 2020 match with Finland remains fresh in many minds and there is the knowledge, too, that Eriksen has been fitted with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) to alleviate the worst-case scenario of a recurrence. But Eriksen has not returned to the Premier League looking for favours and it was clear, in his formal unveiling as a Brentford player on Friday, that he does not see west London as a place to take life slowly.

The aim is to reach his old levels and, in doing so, show that he is no special case. “I felt from the beginning of this that I need to prove you can play with an ICD, if something that bad has happened,” he said. “You can return to normal life afterwards. That is more motivation for me, to show I am capable of that. Of course, at the same time, I have not forgotten how to play football. My body is still the same and my vision and my ability will