Correlation FC

Carvalho scores late to earn a 2-2 draw for the Bees

The Bees went toe-to-toe with the world champions in an entertaining match. The Bees opened with a Jordan Henderson long ball to the always speedy Kevin Schade who finished nicely. Chelsea countered in the second half with beautifully struck goals by Cole Palmer and Moises Caicedo. Brentford tied the game during stoppage time with a Fabio Carvalho goal after a long throw from Schade.

Let's revisit our pre-game predictions.

Prediction #1

Brentford will win.

Incorrect. While a draw is better than a loss, it's definitely not a win.

Prediction #2

Chelsea will have more possession than Brentford.

Very correct. Chelsea ended up with nearly double Brentford's possession.

Prediction #3

The Bees will commit more fouls than Chelsea.

Correct. Brentford out-fouled Chelsea 13-9, although Schade and Michael Kayode would argue that Caicedo should have been called for a few more than he was.

Prediction #4

The Bees will score at least 1 goal against Chelsea.

Correct.

Trends that continued

Goal from a throw-in

The tying goal came directly from a throw0in. The Bees scored 6 of those last season, the only team in the league to score more than 2.

First goal for the Bees

The Bees scored the opening goal, the 4th in their 5 competitive games so far this season.

Bees are shooting well

The Bees had their best shots on target rating of the season, with 4 of their 7 shots (57%) on target. They also had their lowest average distance per shot of the season and their highest expected goal (xG) per shot rating of the season, showing that the team is still disciplined, favouring a low volume of high-quality shots.

Scoring with their last shot

For the 2nd time this season, the Bees scored with their final shot of the game. The first was Igor Thiago's penalty against Nottingham Forest on opening day.

What was different

Tying goal

Carvalho's late goal was the first game-tying goal of the season for the Bees. They hadn't previously tied a game after going behind.

Henderson 90

Jordan Henderson played a strong 90 minutes, his first complete game for the Bees. He lined up well beside Yehor Yarmoliuk and made a beautiful long pass to Kevin Schade for the opening goal.

Started a back 5

This was the first Premier League game in the 2025-26 season where the Bees started with a defensive back 5. They did use a similar formation against Bournemouth in the EFL Cup match earlier in the season.

Swinging corners

Last season, only 1.4% of Brentford's corners were "out-swinging", meaning that the ball is flying away from the goal-line. Typically the Bees would have a right-footed player take corners from the left side, and a left-footed player take corners from the right corner flag. So far this season, that number is 46%. It's difficult to say if it's a conscious strategic change or just a matter of personnel as the Bees haven't played many minutes with a left-footed corner taker since Bryan Mbeumo moved on. We'll continue to monitor this and see how things progress throughout the season.

Fabio Carvalho's goals

Carvalho scoring from close

Fabio Carvalho's late game winning tying goal officially came from a distance of 3 yards, but it felt like he was practically standing inside the net. This was his 5th competitive goal for the Bees. A definite pattern is emerging from these goals as we can see that they've come from rebounds, deflections and second phases of play. They're goal-scorers goals, much like we've seen from our #17 and #11 in recent seasons.

Fabio Carvalho's competitive goals for Brentford (source Correlation FC)

Let's dive deeper into each of those goals.

The question

In our match preview, we asked the question, which team will name a younger starting lineup? We also added in which team started the youngest starting player? Oldest?

Perhaps not surprisingly, Chelsea, who has the youngest squad in the league, fielded the youngest starting lineup. Brentford started their 3 oldest players (Henderson, Ethan Pinnock and Mathias Jensen). Chelsea's average age was 24 years 68 days, while Brentford's was 26 years, 47 days.

The youngest starter was Chelsea's Jorrel Hato at 19 years, 190 days. Henderson's 35 years safely put him in the category of the oldest player. No need to count the days for him.

Some unrelated answers

Before the game we also provided some unrelated answers but didn't provide the questions. It's like a TV game show, but without the prizes. Now we'll provide questions for those answers.

Brentford goal contributions