Brentford boss Thomas Frank _(Image: Jacob King)_
Brentford boss Thomas Frank rued his side's defensive deficiencies after the Bees' 3-1 Carabao Cup defeat to Newcastle United at St. James' Park.
A first-half double from Sandro Tonali before Fabian Schär's close-range effort with 20 minutes left to play condemned the West London side to a quarter-final exit in the competition despite Yoane Wissa's late consolation.
And with the Bees left to lick their wounds after defeat in the north east, Frank is demanding a marked improvement from his side in the days to come.
“On the day, we lost to a better team than us," said Frank to club media. "We didn’t defend well enough. That was the key thing.
“Overall, you can’t go to St James’ Park and concede the three goals we conceded.
"We need to do better. I will look into it, everyone needs to look into it, there’s no doubt about it."
The Bees entered the fixture with a chance at matching their best-ever run in the competition, after reaching the semi-finals in 2021 where they lost to Spurs.
Yet Frank's side saw their best laid plans go awry before even kick-off, with Sepp van den Berg forced to withdraw from the starting 11 after picking up an injury during warmups.
To make matters worse, defensive stalwart Ethan Pinnock was forced to make his way toward the substitutes' bench after just 14 minutes of play.
Frank added: ‘Sepp (van der Berg) did an action and felt his groin. We’ll assess him so we don’t know the exact status of it.’
‘Ethan obviously had a hamstring injury. Again I don’t know enough, we’ll assess him...’
Brentford next welcome high-flying Nottingham Forest to West London on Saturday in a quick turnaround from their travels to the north east.
And with the fixtures coming thick and fast as the winter period gets well and truly underway, fullback Keane Lewis-Potter has acknowledged the need for more defensive steel if the Bees are to have any hope of achieving their ambitions this season.
He said: “We need to have a bit of nastiness about us. We’re expecting to score two/three/four goals every game - we can’t do that.
“We can’t go into away games expecting to do that and win games, it’s not going to happen.
“They score the first one \[Newcastle\] - that’s going to happen in football - but we can’t let our heads drop.
“And we have to be more solid and aggressive from set-pieces, it’s too easy. It’s difficult right now.”