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Brentford!

Some decent players were signed on loan eg the keeper and Anderson but they'll obviously be going back to their parent clubs.At least Fulham tried to do it differently this year ,although ovbviously loans don't work if you get relegated .

Trouble is like us they had no one who could score - only 9 home goals in the season ( a Prem low). Also played lots of tippy tappy crap :Cry:

And getting back on subject - Brentford play proper attacking football
 
Trouble is like us they had no one who could score - only 9 home goals in the season ( a Prem low). Also played lots of tippy tappy crap :Cry:

And getting back on subject - Brentford play proper attacking football

Can only talk about Brentford from last season.Recently promoted sides from the Championship don't tend to last long in the Prem however .The gap is wider now than ever,unfortunately
 
If they go up on their budget will it decrease the volume of people on here complaining about iPads? One can only hope but I doubt it.

They're doing the iPad thing correctly though, they've gone all in Moneyball, got everyone on the same page from owner to tea lady, have extensive scouting networks throughout europe and beyond and a data programme on players based on NFL/MLB models.
MM and co were playing on zx spectrums in comparison.

Oh, and their budget is huge, they've got reserve players on 10k+ a week, but their methods to being able to have that large budget are very impressive.
 
Oh, and their budget is huge, they've got reserve players on 10k+ a week, but their methods to being able to have that large budget are very impressive.
Compared to other Championship clubs my understanding was their budget is bottom half.
This is a route I would have liked to see us going further down to be honest as part of a longer-term project, a lot of the clubs punching above their weight even in the lower leagues are making heavy use of analysis much as people take the **** out of it and you have to start somewhere.
 
For me it's like Leicester winning the FA Cup rather than one of the 6reedy, Brentford deserve it after just missing out on automatic promotion the last 2 seasons with their shiney new stadium.

A victory for football always welcome in the greedy no loyalty money driven environment we can only dream of being part of.
 
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Compared to other Championship clubs my understanding was their budget is bottom half.
This is a route I would have liked to see us going further down to be honest as part of a longer-term project, a lot of the clubs punching above their weight even in the lower leagues are making heavy use of analysis much as people take the **** out of it and you have to start somewhere.

I'm with you on the analysis, but clubs have to be all in for a long term project and the other thing is Brentford owner is wealthy, very wealthy and had enough funds to start the ball rolling with the scouting and going the moneyball route.
You can have as many iPads as you want but the majority of the work is done by people on the ground getting to games to feed into the database. This is where Southend would struggle, we do not have the funds to run a programme like that and with the current owner have burnt so many bridges the goodwill of volunteers has also gone out of the window even to do this on a smaller, local scale.
I read a scouting piece by Sheff wed head scout, he said they were only paying 2 scouts in the UK, all their other info was coming from guys they just paid expenses to, to get to whatever games they could, mainly in non-league, sadly I just can't see that happening with the current set up of Southend United.

https://otakukart.com/matthew-benham-net-worth/
article here about Matthew Benham and his deep involvement into how Brentford are run, he's probably the most hands on owner in the whole of English football.
 
I think Brentford are one of those clubs that got rid of their academy. If that's true, are they really a club to be admired?
 
I think Brentford are one of those clubs that got rid of their academy. If that's true, are they really a club to be admired?
It makes sense for them. They are surrounded by clubs with extremely strong academies that they struggle to compete for players of adequate quality against in the younger age groups.
 
Thought this article on Brentford was interesting....

Big Data Model Takes Local London Team to Soccer’s Richest Game
2021-05-28 04:00:00.1 GMT


By David Hellier
(Bloomberg) -- A sporting strategy engineered on the west
coast of America has given a small community club in the west of
London a fresh shot at the richest game in world soccer.
Brentford Football Club will challenge Swansea City AFC on
Saturday in a playoff final that grants the victor passage to
the U.K. Premier League and the potential to pocket hundreds of
millions of pounds in new broadcast and sponsorship revenue.
For Brentford, it’s another chance to break the curse of
nine previous playoff failures and return to the apex of English
soccer for the first time in more than 70 years. It would also
cap almost a decade of ownership under data-driven entrepreneur
Matthew Benham.
The University of Oxford-educated former Bank of America
Corp. employee has transformed Brentford’s fortunes by using
analytics to unearth talent missed by traditional scouting
methods. His dealings have kept the club competitive through the
regular sales of star performers and drawn comparisons to Billy
Beane, the ex-U.S. baseball player who pioneered a similar model
during his time managing California’s Oakland Athletics -- a
story later retold in Michael Lewis’s 2003 book “Moneyball.”
“Matthew’s ownership strategy has been an inspiration for
people like myself, who are trying to change and modernize the
way people look at club ownership,” said Jordan Gardner,
majority shareholder in Denmark’s FC Helsingor.

Rich Rewards

Deloitte LLP estimates the winner of the playoff final can
generate around 280 million pounds ($397 million) in revenue
over five years if it survives a first season in the top
division. This has led to the game being dubbed the richest in
soccer. Brentford’s revenue for the year ended June 30, 2020,
was 13.9 million pounds, excluding player sales, according to
accounts for the period.
A win on Saturday would reward Benham for years of personal
investment in Brentford, nicknamed the Bees. A fan of the club
himself, Benham emerged as a potential owner in 2009 when he
entered into a partnership agreement with the Supporters’ Trust
that was then in charge. He purchased the controlling
shareholding in 2012.
Since then, he’s plowed more than 100 million pounds into
the club, accounts show, and seen it develop a reputation for
exciting, attacking soccer -- a marked change from its more
labored style in the decades before his arrival.
A representative for Brentford declined to comment and a
request to contact Benham through the club was declined.
“Benham told fans when he took over that he had a strategy
and asked them to come on a journey with him and urged them to
have a great time,” Kieran Maguire, a lecturer in soccer finance
at the University of Liverpool. “Apart from the team’s playoff
record, they have done well.”
Backing it all up is a statistics-heavy approach that’s
already worked for Benham at Danish Superliga team FC
Midtjylland, which he’s owned since 2014 and turned into three-
time champions. At Brentford, he recruited mathematics graduates
to analyze the data behind players across the world that were
slipping under the radar. This helped identify talents such as
Neal Maupay, Said Benrahma and Ollie Watkins, who were all sold
on for big profit to Premier League clubs.
“The fans see him as a fan first and a smart, successful
businessman next,” said Maguire. “Brentford fans have realistic
expectations and know that the player development model can help
the club punch above its weight.”

Numbers Game

Benham’s methods have their roots in banking and
bookmaking. After a brief stint at Bank of America in the 1990s,
he entered the gambling industry with Matchbook, a sports
betting exchange, and Smartodds, which describes itself as a
privately-owned company providing statistical research and
sports modeling services.
“Much of Matthew’s philosophy of football club ownership
comes from his other business, Smartodds, which is a very
successful betting company,” said Gardner, who is also a
minority investor in Swansea City.
Brentford is managed on a relatively tight budget. At about
26 million pounds, its wage bill ranks 14th out of the 24
Championship teams, according to Maguire. This figure still
dwarfs club revenue, with the impact of stadium lockdowns during
the pandemic dragging it to an operating loss of 9.2 million
pounds after player sales in the latest financial year.
One way Benham sought to redress the balance prior to the
onset of Covid-19 was by moving Brentford to a new 17,000-plus
capacity arena with thousands of premium hospitality seats. The
club has started welcoming fans back to games in limited
numbers.
After the club’s final game at its old Griffin Park stadium
last year -- a 3-1 victory over Swansea City that ensured
Brentford’s place in the 2020 playoff final -- Benham was
serenaded by fans who’d gathered outside to celebrate the win
and bid farewell to their home of more than a century.
It was a rare sight in an era of strained relations between
supporters and club hierarchies, something that has only
worsened this season following the Super League fiasco.
“You won’t find a single fan who would say a word against
him, and that’s unusual,” Greg Dyke, chairman of Brentford
between 2006 and 2013, said of Benham.
 
Going to watch it on Nowtv day license. I refuse to have the full Sky thingy.

Cone on Brentford.
 
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Don't want to **** on anyone's chips but as the Bees' neighbours from SW6 have proved twice in the last 3 seasons,staying up in the Prem after being promoted from the Championship is a tricky one to pull off.
 
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