Igor Thiago scored a hat-trick to end his brief goal drought in style as Brentford leapfrogged Everton in the Premier League with a comfortable victory at Hill Dickinson Stadium.<\/p>\n
Thiago, who failed to score in six league games in December, now has 14 goals this season – with only Manchester City’s Erling Haaland in front of him.<\/p>\n
“Strikers live and breathe [goals] and get a lot of confidence from it,” Brentford boss Keith Andrews told BBC Match of the Day.<\/p>\n
“[Thiago has] played well without scoring recently. His performance today was sensational. He deserves the accolades.”<\/p>\n
The hosts began brightly as Dwight McNeil forced a save out of Caoimhin Kelleher on four minutes before James Tarkowski’s header from the resulting corner was cleared off the line by Thiago.<\/p>\n
And the Brazilian then made an impact at the other end as the visitors went ahead against the run of play in the 11th minute.<\/p>\n
The striker arrived in the six-yard area to guide Vitaly Janelt’s precise cross past Everton goalkeeper Jordan Pickford for his 12th goal of the league campaign.<\/p>\n
Pickford had to advance off the line to deny Thiago a second, while former Liverpool keeper Kelleher’s brilliant reflex save to keep out Thierno Barry’s low header preserved Brentford’s slender lead at the break.<\/p>\n
Everton’s players were met with boos from the stands as the half-time whistle blew and their day went from bad to worse when Brentford captain Nathan Collins doubled the visitors’ lead with a glancing header from Janelt’s corner in the 50th minute.<\/p>\n
Only a minute later, Thiago got his second as Kevin Schade ran on to a through ball from Mathias Jensen but was stopped by Jake O’Brien, only for the striker to pick up the loose ball and slot past Pickford.<\/p>\n
Beto, a half-time substitute, pulled one back for Everton with a header in the 66th minute but Thiago completed his hat-trick after latching on to a long ball from Collins and dinking past Pickford.<\/p>\n
Barry then popped in at the far post to head home a ball from Jack Grealish for Everton’s second, but Brentford held on for a rare away victory.<\/p>\n
Brentford are up to seventh place with 30 points after 20 games, while Everton fall to 12th but are only two points behind the Bees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Igor Thiago scored a hat-trick to end his brief goal drought in style as Brentford leapfrogged Everton in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389048,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[403,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-389047","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-soccer","8":"tag-soccer","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389047","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389047"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389047\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}