Brentford boss Thomas Frank said that despite his frustration with the first half in the defeat at Burnley, he was keen to look at the ‘bigger picture’ of their performances since promotion.

His team were beaten at Turf Moor, after a disappointing first 45 that saw the Bees 3-0 down at half-time in Saturday’s Premier League clash, eventually losing 3-1.

Although Brentford improved after the break and scored a fine goal through striker Saman Ghoddos, the damage was done as their opponents recorded a maiden Premier League win this season.

The manager was left rueing the drop in defensive standards but did also state that the majority of his team’s performances since they arrived in the Premier League have been positive. 

“It was a very bad first half of course,” said Frank following the defeat at Turf Moor.

“I think we have played 10 games, 20 halves and two of them have been bad – the second at West Ham and then the first half here.

“Looking at the bigger perspective, I am irritated and frustrated with the first half but in the bigger picture we have done well.

“We need to learn from the first half and cut those mistakes out as soon as possible.

“It was a fair and square win for Burnley and I don’t want to run away from that. They were better than us. We knew what they would do to try to hurt us, we trained on it, talked about it.

“Then we executed it very badly, I am talking about the first two goals and the offside goal in particular. Those situations we knew what they would do exactly.

“Our normal defensive standards are better, but we didn’t do that today for whatever reason.”

Poor defending in particular for the second Burnley goal, which saw league debutant goalkeeper Álvaro Fernández and Rico Henry’s uncertainty allow Matt Lowton a free header, will have upset Brentford fans.

The Bees did improve after half-time, but by that point it was a mammoth task to rescue anything from the game.

“In the second half we were better,” said Frank. “We just got a minor part of the fightback. But in the Premier League if you are not 100% on it for any of the game, you get punished. We were punished in the first half.

“It was a very good goal from Saman (Ghoddos) in the second half and I liked the way we came back into the game, but the dynamic also changed.

“It was also difficult to keep going for Burnley in that scenario being 3-0 up. But I am pleased we came back into it and maybe with an earlier goal, we maybe could have created a little bit more pressure.

“But the first half we need to get out of the system, learn from and then look forward.”

Although Saturday was arguably Brentford’s most disappointing outing since arriving in the top flight, the Danish boss is confident his team can respond in the right way, when they face basement club Norwich City next weekend.

Frank added: "It is always about bouncing back with a good performance when you are promoted.

"We lost to Chelsea, then bounced back with a good performance against Leicester, ok we lost again.

"Then we bounced back with a good performance against Stoke. Now we need to respond with a top performance against Norwich next Saturday.

"The fans have been amazing - I’m really sorry we couldn’t give them something good to go home with on the journey back but they deserve all the praise.

"They know we need to do better but it’s not due to a lack of effort. I hope that they saw that even during the first half, it is not lack of effort.

"We learn and move forward, and we’ll be ready for Saturday."