Access All Areas: Brentford – inside the club’s envied recruitment set-up

For the past two months, The Athletic has been granted behind-the-scenes access at Brentford.

The result is a four-part podcast — Access All Areas: Brentford — telling the story of the club’s rise to the Premier League, their world-envied recruitment methods, and what the future holds for their model.

Included in the episodes are interviews with the club’s head coach Thomas Frank, defender Ben Mee, new club captain Christian Norgaard and other senior figures, including director of football Phil Giles.

You can listen to it for free wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify, just search for Access All Areas: Brentford or The Athletic’s documentary feed Go Deeper.

What you are about to read is a written accompaniment to episode two, which focuses on the club’s transfer strategy. In it we reveal the following:

The theory behind Brentford’s recruitment strategy is simple enough — buy low, sell high. They collect data on 85,500 players in different leagues around the world though, so where do you even begin with locating rough diamonds?

“We bring that down into a manageable number of 5,000 players,” Lee Dykes, Brentford’s technical director who is in charge of their recruitment department, tells The Athletic at the club’s training ground. “The coolest thing about the data is it’s Matthew’s.”

Matthew is, of course, Matthew Benham, who became Brentford’s majority owner in 2012. Benham was an investment banker and had a spell as the vice-president of the Bank of America. After working under Tony Bloom, who went on to take charge of Brighton & Hove Albion, Benham set up Smartodds — a company which provides data and advice to gamblers. It turned out the data Smartodds collected could be applied to running a football club, too.

Brentford’s bold use of data allowed them to turn undervalued players into stars and sell them for a huge profit. They would reinvest the money in raising the overall level of the squad. Their total outlay on Ollie Watkins, Said Benrahma and Neal Maupay was £5million. Brentford raised around £70m by selling them.

“It is unique,” Dykes says of the data. “We are using the numbers our way. A lot of people that say they have data are correct, but it is a shared resource with other clubs. Where is the marginal gain there?”

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When you start playing football as a child, one of the first rules you learn is there can only be 11 players on each team. It doesn’t matter what formations or tactics you use, unless somebody gets sent off, that number remains the same. Yet, Dykes believes there are 16 different positions.

“Ryan Giggs was a very different left-winger to Cristiano Ronaldo,” he says. “They played in two different areas of the pitch with different skill sets. But if you were classifying them in their prime, they were both left wingers. If Brentford fans compare Maupay, Watkins and (Ivan) Toney, you probably have three different types of strikers and they all worked.

“The best players are the ones that fit multiple positions. That’s what you’re always looking for. But to find the players that fit our philosophy we have six key criteria in every position.“

For a full-back, for example, three of the key areas scouts analyse are a player’s one-v-one defending ability, tactical understanding and running capacity. In Frank’s system, full-backs are expected to contribute in attack and track back so good stamina is crucial.

“It’s very rare that a player scores 10 out of 10 in all the criteria,” Frank tells The Athletic at the club’s stadium. “There were 50 video scouting reports on Bryan Mbeumo before we approached him. When I watch a player with my coaches, if we like him, then we take the next step.

“But with Bryan as a winger, we needed a deep runner. That was key for us because we had Said (Benrahma) on the other wing who was more of a dribbler.”

The analysts in the recruitment department will highlight the top four to six players in each position. They then submit a document every month and the best players are referred to Dykes and other key members of staff.

Brentford signed Kevin Schade on loan in January, before making the move permanent in June for £22m — that was the culmination of a two-year process. He was first flagged up by the recruitment department when he was playing for the reserves of German club Freiburg. Brentford accelerated their interest when he made his Bundesliga debut and became a Germany Under-21 international.

Brentford’s scouts were even more meticulous with centre-back Kristoffer Ajer, who was briefly the club’s record signing after they poached him from Celtic in July 2021 for £13.5m. Brentford analysed more than 120 of Ajer’s matches and split them into two categories — green for a good performance and red for a bad display.

“Players are constantly objectively and subjectively checked and assessed,“ Dykes says. “There’s a lot of trust within the recruitment circle from all the individuals involved. Everybody knows what we’re looking for, the criteria and what we need in the squad.

“You have to be ready in all of the 16 positions. You may get an injury or somebody will offer silly money for one of your players, but then as you approach the window you drill down on the priorities.

“It’s mine, Phil and Thomas’ responsibility to find out who the best available players are and understand where it fits now. You can find a world-class talent that might not fit or block a pathway for one of the younger players so sometimes you can’t sign them. But when there’s an opportunity, it’s about everybody believing in it. There’s a lot of people that need to say yes for a deal to happen.

“Sometimes you’re going through the process and you pull it back because players quickly go up in valuation and past a club like Brentford. All of a sudden a player might score a hat-trick or a great goal.”

The best example of Brentford missing out on a highly rated player is Ukrainian winger Mykhailo Mudryk. Brentford made several attempts to sign him from Shakhtar Donetsk and on deadline day in August 2022 lodged a club-record bid of €30m which was rejected.

Six days later, Mudryk was directly involved in three goals as Shakhtar beat RB Leipzig 4-1 in the Champions League group stages. The secret was out and Brentford’s interest in the then-21-year-old was over. Arsenal led the chase for Mudryk in the January transfer window before Chelsea pounced at the last moment and sealed a deal for the Ukrainian international worth €100m.

“We have walked away from situations too,” Dykes adds. “Sometimes a player’s head gets turned, there is an escalated agent’s fee or a club has a silly valuation. We don’t just go to the table and say, ‘What do you want? Let’s pay it.’ Phil and I will have conversations around where we see this player’s market value at its lowest, medium and its highest. If it falls within that bracket and we see the value in doing it at that time, then we will do business.”

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How a player fits into the team is key. The recruitment department might have highlighted a winger with exceptional one-v-one dribbling skills, but if their tactics are based around getting crosses into the box for Toney, then they might need to assess their priorities.

“I was asked for advice by a good friend who was managing in the Championship and was struggling with a left-sided centre-back I knew well,” Dykes says. “I told him they needed to sign a right-winger. He looked at me strangely and said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘(The centre-back’s) biggest asset is his long distribution. If you bring somebody in that’s really good in the air, you’ll start to get the best out of the centre-back in possession.’

“It’s the full package that we look for when we’re signing any player. We always consider the immediate units around the individual, but also where it lies within the squad and the balance of the starting XI. If you sign a left-winger, you should be thinking about the right-winger.

“It’s not just signing Ben Mee as an individual and saying, ‘Right, what is he going to do on the pitch?’ It’s about the impact he has on Ethan (Pinnock), Rico (Henry), Aaron Hickey and the young centre-backs that are looking up to him.”

Dykes, Benham, Frank and Giles, as the nucleus of Brentford’s transfer committee, need to agree for a signing to go ahead, but Frank insists he has the ultimate decision. “If Matthew feels that I don’t like the player, then he hugely respects that,” Frank says. “That’s crucial, because I need to put him on the pitch. But most of the time when we sign a player, like Hickey for example, I was big on him as well as Matthew, Phil, Lee and the coaches. That’s the easy one.”

Brentford became shrewd operators in the transfer market out of necessity. When they were in the second tier of English football, their resources were dwarfed by bigger and historically more successful rivals. Their annual turnover was around £10m on average. They needed to spend every penny wisely.

For a few years, a theme emerged which frustrated the club’s fanbase. Brentford were constantly forced to cash in on their prized assets. In January 2019 they lost talented young centre-back Chris Mepham to Bournemouth for £12m and Ezri Konsa departed for Aston Villa six months later.

“When you are in the Championship, you have to sell to fund what you’re doing,” Giles tells The Athletic. “So in a way, it isn’t that hard a decision. You don’t necessarily know which players will go, but you have an idea window on window where the players are going to be, where their contract length is and whether you want to be moving them on or keeping them.”

Five minutes after losing the 2020 Championship play-off final to Fulham, Brentford’s senior leadership team had an impromptu meeting in a suite at Wembley and decided to sell Ollie Watkins and Said Benrahma — their two star players. The following day, they confirmed their plans in a recruitment meeting at the training ground.

“No one wanted to be there,” Giles says. “But I told everyone, ‘We are one of the best teams in this division. We know there’ll be one or two changes but not too many. We’re not planning on ripping the squad apart. We go again in two weeks, crack on.’ So the short turnaround made that relatively easy.”

“There’s always that little bit of fear,” Frank admits though. “Can we really replace them?”

Giles was pragmatic about Brentford’s situation. Yet the first-team squad, still reeling from the anguish of failing to get promoted, had to wave goodbye to two of the best players in the division.

“I trusted the club’s choices,” Norgaard says. “When I came in, I was hoping Neal Maupay would stay but they sold him to Brighton. They knew that Ollie had to play as a centre-forward, Said Benrahma was back from his injury and they bought in Bryan Mbeumo. You could see how much talent they had upfront.

“No one spoke about Maupay and that was the same when Said and Ollie left — they brought in Ivan (Toney). Six months ago they had already made that decision. It was as if they were always two steps ahead. They are playing chess and they are quite good at it.”

Brentford replaced Benrahma and Watkins with ease, but finding somebody to provide cover for Toney is one of their biggest challenges yet. Toney is not allowed to play until January after he was banned by the Football Association for eight months in May after admitting 232 breaches of their betting rules.

Toney scored 34 per cent of the club’s goals in the top flight last season. Only Erling Haaland (36) and Harry Kane (30) scored more than him (20). Brentford’s success next season will hinge on how effectively they cope without their talismanic striker.

“You can’t replace Ivan,” Dykes says. “He is very Zlatan Ibrahimovic-esque in terms of the impact he has. He’s got an aura around him and quickly became a leader in our group.

“You just have to go for the player you believe in the most to come in and play as the next No 9 for Brentford. We may have a couple of people internally that we think could do that. Signing a No 9 in the marketplace is incredibly difficult.”

When Brentford were preparing to face Arsenal on the opening day of the 2021-22 season, people constantly pointed to their lack of Premier League experience. Only Toney and Sergi Canos had played in the competition before; Toney had less than 10 minutes in two substitute appearances for Newcastle United; Sergi Canos played once for Liverpool.

How would a squad which had been assembled with players from the lower divisions of France, England and Germany as well as the Danish top flight, survive in what some say is the toughest league in the world?

“Don’t listen to outside noise,” Giles says. “Outside noise will pull you in all different directions. You need some experience, but does it have to be in the Premier League? If you put Real Madrid in the Premier League would they say, ‘We’ve only got Modric who has played here before, we’re going to struggle.’ It’s about how good your team is.”

Brentford silenced their critics in that opening fixture against Arsenal. Goals from Canos and Norgaard secured them victory while they impressed in encounters with West Ham United, Liverpool and Chelsea, too.

When they beat Liverpool 3-1 at home in January 2023, six of the starting XI had also been in the line-up for the 2020 Championship play-off final. Brentford did not need to drastically change their squad, it only required a few minor enhancements.

“Premier League experience can sometimes be a negative as much as a positive,” Dykes says. “I’m not saying it’s never a consideration, but we just felt going into the Premier League, looking at the data measures we were already well in the mix.”

Brentford did suffer a dip in form after Christmas during their debut season in the top-flight. They lost five games in a row between January and February 2022. Thomas Frank decided to call upon Christian Eriksen, who was attempting to resume his career after recovering from a cardiac arrest.

Signing Eriksen was a one-off opportunity for Brentford. He lit up the Premier League during seven years with Tottenham Hotspur and then helped Inter Milan win the Serie A title in 2020-21. Surely the recruitment department jumped at the chance to recruit an elite player?

“He did pass the test, but I will be honest, I questioned it at the time,” Dykes says. “I’m all about pathways and I was questioning what it would do to other players. I think it’s healthy that you do that. But everybody was just aligned on the fact this is a super talent who was going to raise the level of the other players.”

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Brentford have broken their transfer record twice this summer with the signings of Kevin Schade and Nathan Collins. However, it is an addition to the B team’s squad that attracted most attention. Romeo Beckham, the son of the former Manchester United, Real Madrid and LA Galaxy midfielder David Beckham who captained England at two World Cups, initially joined the club on loan from Inter Miami, co-owned by his dad, in January before the move was made permanent in June.

Beckham has had a strange career. He was released by Arsenal at the age of 12 and then concentrated on tennis — receiving lessons from Andy Murray and Grigor Dimitrov. He did not play football for nearly five years years until he joined Inter Miami’s reserves in 2021, so he missed a crucial period of his development.

“I’ve got a good connection with his dad and Phil Neville, who has now left Inter Miami,” Dykes says. “They asked us to help Romeo with his off-season programme. We got him in for training and I liked him. I wanted to speak to him about his ambitions. If he had to play in the EFL, would that be in his mindset? Romeo just wants a career in football and we feel we can help him go on to another level.”

Beckham made his debut in a cup tie against semi-professional side Welling United in January. He scored a header in added-time to help the B team beat Wealdstone a month later. Yet he failed to make a single appearance in the knockout stages of the Premier League Cup, which is a competition for youth sides. Brentford B beat Arsenal’s, Fulham’s and Blackburn Rovers’ Under-21’s sides en route to winning the tournament.

“The tempo was a big challenge for him initially, but he quickly got up to speed,” Dykes says. “He’s in a much better position and that’s all we try to do with every player. The sky’s the limit for Romeo. The big plus for me was there was a massive hunger from him to become a professional footballer.

“We never rule out anything with our B-team players if he suddenly escalates to a top level. One of Thomas’ super skills is he’s very open minded and all about merit and performance. If Romeo was producing and he was getting close to that first team, then there’s an opportunity like there is for every player.”

Brentford have just finished ninth in the top flight, narrowly missing out on qualifying for Europe, and play at the shiny Gtech Community Stadium which opened in September 2020. Before then, their home ground was the beloved but crumbling Griffin Park, which only had a 12,000 capacity. The club is now a much easier sell.

When Brentford were trying to sign Pontus Jansson from Leeds United in the summer of 2019, Frank was in Denmark with his wife visiting their daughter’s boarding school. Frank called up Jansson and did not get off the phone until he had convinced the defender to move to west London, much to the frustration of his family.

Frank pitched the idea of joining Brentford to Christian Eriksen, intervened when Toney was hesitant about committing to the club, and recruited Norgaard too.

“Thomas called me around wintertime and said we need a defensive midfielder,” Norgaard says. “He said, ‘We’ve seen your footage from your time in Brondby before you went to Fiorentina and you’re exactly the type we need.’ They’ve got all their metrics and I had a green light in front of my name for a lot of them.

“Towards the end of the season, Fiorentina made it clear I could find another club. I had further talks with Thomas and (former co-director of football) Rasmus (Ankersen). The whole project they presented in front of me was so specific — they had done their homework on me. You could sense that Brentford were doing something different and I wanted to be part of that.”

In December 2022, Brentford opened their new performance centre, a significant upgrade on what existed before at the same site on Jersey Road. Their old training ground was just a collection of Portakabins which looked more appropriate for a school team. At one stage, the gym doubled up as the canteen. Players would be tucking into a bowl of cereal while their team-mates lifted weights next to them. Giles used to avoid showing the training ground to prospective new signings.

“They were scared of showing it to me,” Norgaard says. “But it wasn’t a problem. There was something humbling about it. It was just like going back to your roots.

“I wanted to fall in love with football again and this was the perfect place for it. I went from Fiorentina which was a big club with nice facilities, but I was not motivated or happy. I was ready for the grind when I joined Brentford, even though it’s not the prettiest of training grounds.”

Giles did not show Ben Mee the training ground when he held discussions with the defender about joining the club last summer, yet it didn’t matter. Mee had spent a decade playing for Burnley under Sean Dyche and was eager for a new challenge after his contract expired. Brentford’s analysts and Frank were convinced he could adapt to their philosophy of playing out from the back. Brentford might have a reputation for developing young talent, but they have pushed Mee out of his comfort zone too and reaped the rewards.

“Coming into the system they fully believed that I could fit in and do a good job,” Mee, who turns 34 in September, tells The Athletic. “I’m someone that loves to learn and develop, even at my age. There is loads of enthusiasm for the game from every single member of staff and it rubs off on players.

“All of the information and analysis they give you was quite overwhelming at the beginning. Positions on the ball, when to play the pass, how to delay it, to be comfortable having a few more touches and enticing players in.

“If I was a young player coming straight into the team, it would be difficult to go out on the pitch and remember everything that was put in front of me. But being a bit more experienced, I was able to grasp it quicker.

“In previous seasons I’ve done an awful lot of defending. Last year, I had a better chance to be on the ball and express myself which is great. It’s something I used to do a lot and maybe I came away from that a little bit when I went to senior football.

“We create more, get bodies forward and take risks. I remember speaking to Thomas when we were either losing or drawing in a game. I looked over to him to say, ‘Shall I go up for a throw-in?’ He said, ‘Yeah, always go every single time, no doubt about it.’ That is refreshing for me and one reason why I really enjoyed the season.”

Brentford have become masters of an art football fans around the world obsess over: identifying talent and cultivating a squad which is capable of thriving. People spend hours fantasising about creating teams filled with luxury players. In reality, it is a difficult task.

“When you are taking a photograph with a new signing after they have signed the contract it’s enjoyable,” Giles says. “Then you can put the pen down and go, ‘Job done, onto the next one.’ The rest of it can be intense and stressful. The least fun part is when you end up pulling out of a deal for whatever reason because you feel like you let people down.”

Intense and stressful, yet Brentford’s track record speaks for itself.

You can listen the full series for free wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify, just search for Access All Areas: Brentford or The Athletic’s documentary feed Go Deeper.