Dean Smith rued his side’s inability to find a winner as they were held to a 1-1 draw against ten-man Preston North End at Griffin Park on Saturday.

Tom Barkhuisen put the visitors ahead shortly after half time only for Florian Jozefzoon to equalise shortly after, before Greg Cunningham was shown a second yellow card fifteen minutes from the end.

Smith said: “It is a good point but a frustrating point. We should have got three points today as our performance was good. Defensively we were good. They had a couple of chances in the first five minutes but other than that we defended well.

“They are a team who wanted to delay the restarts and break up play which didn’t make for a naturally flowing game.

“We overcame that and started the second half well but they scored out of nothing. We had to go and chase the game but our reaction was great.

“It was a good finish from Florian Jozefzoon and after that there was only going to be one winner.

“Unfortunately, we just didn’t get it. We were the dominant team and we should be walking away with three points.”

The Brentford boss believes his tenth-placed side need to be more clinical if they are to close the eight-point gap to the play-off places.

“We just have to take our chances when they come,” said Smith.

“We had a few today and had 27 against Norwich City last time here.

“The endeavour is there but we just need that little bit of quality in the final third. Neal Maupay was very good today and that was appreciated by the fans.

“We got it into him and he linked things up very well. He had the one chance in the first half today which he will feel he should have scored.

“At the end we had as many goalscorers on the pitch as we could and you felt we would get one of those chances to drop.

"On another day we go and win that one three or four to one.”

Brentford made three changes to the side that lost 3-0 to Derby last time out, and Smith praised the performances of those that came in.

He said: “I was forced into three changes.

“Sergi Canos got sent off last week, Chris Mepham was ill this morning, and Ryan Woods got a whack on the ankle last week.

“He was due to train Thursday and Friday but he couldn’t get through training because of the pain in his ankle.

“We had to change that around and I thought that Josh McEachran did well.

"We have a squad of players who know how we want to play.

“The ones not in the starting XI have a good idea of how we want to approach the game and there’s a great tactical understanding so it was easy to put John Egan back into the team today.”