On a summer day last year, Billy Grant was writing a fan season preview for The Guardian and trying to be optimistic about Brentford.<\/p>\n
The newspaper was not nearly as generous, placing the club 18th and expecting relegation. That view seemed understandable. Brentford had spent four years punching above its weight in the Premier League with one of the division\u2019s smallest wage bills, but the summer had stripped the squad of Thomas Frank, Christian N\u00f8rgaard, Mark Flekken and Bryan Mbeumo. Yoane Wissa was on strike, Jordan Henderson arrived on a free transfer as the headline signing, and the attack was left leaning heavily on Igor Thiago, who had barely played in his first season because of a meniscus injury.<\/p>\n
Keith Andrews, the set piece coach, replaced Frank. On paper, it looked like a gamble. Brentford then lost 3-1 at Nottingham Forest on opening day, and Grant, who hosts the Beesotted podcast, admitted the mood was bleak. \u201cThey literally wiped the floor with us,\u201d he says. \u201cThe fans were really concerned. We were rubbish. Thiago was terrible. Forest tore us to pieces.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nine months later, Brentford were at Anfield on the final day chasing Europa League qualification. A late Dango Ouattara header might have taken them there, but they finished ninth on goal difference. They had become one of the league\u2019s most efficient teams from set pieces, while also showing they could score and win in different ways, including a 3-2 home victory over Liverpool in October.<\/p>\n
The key to that consistency lies in Brentford\u2019s structure. Owner Matthew Benham, an Oxford physics graduate who built Smartodds, has shaped the club around data since taking full control in 2012. Phil Giles, Cliff Crown and Lee Dykes form a back-office framework that decides style and recruitment, leaving the coach to train and manage the team. When Frank left, Brentford did not need a new philosophy. They needed someone who could execute theirs.<\/p>\n
That is why Andrews, who had only been at the club for a year, fit so neatly. The directors all arrived at his name independently. As Dykes put it, \u201cA no-brainer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brentford\u2019s history explains the logic. Benham\u2019s early investment rescued a struggling club, and later decisions, including the promotion of Frank, showed the value of patience and continuity. The club has also built a reputation for identifying players and staff others overlooked, then turning them into key assets.<\/p>\n
As Grant says, \u201cNothing seems to faze them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Brentford\u2019s structure, set pieces and recruitment kept them competing despite summer losses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18629,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[728,172],"tags":[1162,182],"class_list":["post-18630","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brentford","category-epl","tag-analytics","tag-transfers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18630","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18630"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18630\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18630"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18630"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18630"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}