Thomas Frank's Newcastle table claim after Brentford boss' spiky response to pressure question

Brentford boss Thomas Frank has claimed that Newcastle United would 'prefer' to be in his side's position ahead of Saturday's huge game against the Magpies.

Newcastle could, remarkably, leapfrog Brentford into 14th place with a win in the capital following a swing in results in recent weeks.

Brentford were ninth at one point last month - 10 points clear of Newcastle - but the Bees have won just one of their last 10 top-flight fixtures.

In contrast, during the same period, Newcastle have rallied under Eddie Howe and the Magpies also have two games in hand on out of form Brentford who, admittedly, have had a particularly tough run of fixtures of late.

Following Saturday's 2-1 defeat against Arsenal, Frank was asked if his players were feeling the pressure after the newly-promoted Bees previously made such a fearless start to the season.

"I don't know how you can say a major fear," he told reporters on Zoom. "We're playing away to Arsenal, one of the biggest clubs so the narrative is now...if you look at the last four out of the five games we played, we have played Arsenal, Man United, [Man] City and Liverpool.

"I think they are relatively big clubs and good clubs, and it will be a disaster if they lose points to us.

"We went toe to toe with Man United and should have got something out of it. We played a fantastic defensive game at Man City. We did 60 very good minutes against Liverpool. I wanted more but we still played against an Arsenal side that did fantastically.

"If you look at us in terms of the other teams that are below us, I still think they would prefer to be in our position so, for me, one game at a time and one training session at a time."