How Baseball built Brentford
Brentford’s rise to the Premier League has been nothing short of miraculous but the philosophy behind that journey is revolutionary and could change the complexion of football forever.
Whilst the Bees are quite tight lipped about the specifics of their methods, the basis of their system is nothing new. In fact, its already revolutionised one sport and been the subject of a Hollywood movie.
That movie is Moneyball and features Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, the General Manager of MLB team, the Oakland A’s. The film chronicles the story of how Beane changed baseball forever by using statistical analysis to find value in players that other teams didn’t see. That year, the A’s won a then league record 20 games in a row and made the playoffs despite everyone tipping them to be the worst team in the league. They won the same number of games as the super rich New York Yankees but only spent $260,000 per win in comparison to the Yankees $1.4 million.
The season was so successful that John Henry, owner of the Boston Red Sox, offered Beane a 5 year $12.5 million contract to be his GM. An offer that at the time would have made him the highest paid GM in the history of sports.
Well when Brentford were bought by Matthew Benham in 2012 he wanted to take a similar approach with the Bees. Benham had made his money through professional gambling and a betting company and understood the power that analytics and probability could have over gut instinct.
Between Benham and Rasmus Ankersen, Brentford’s co-director of football, they completely fleshed out the club from top to bottom and changed the way they functioned.
They started with the academy, completely disbanding it and forming a B team squad. In the past, the club was spending £1.5 million a season of their own money running the academy, along with a £500,000 subsidiary from the Premier League. However, when Benham took over in 2012, the last academy graduate to be a regular in the first team had made his debut in 2005.
They decided that it wasn’t a cost effective method, and rather than spending £15 million over ten years on potential first teamers it could immediately be invested to improve the quality of the playing squad.
The B team was a method of developing players from the ages of 17 to the early 20’s without spending vast amounts of money. The club had learnt the hard way that players under 16 could leave for next to no money to bigger clubs, after Ian Poveda left for Man City and Josh Bohui was pinched by Man United for roughly £30,000 each, despite the fact they had both represented England at youth level.
The B team plays lower league teams or other clubs academy squads to gain experience and if the first team is short on players then a player is ready to be called up immediately from the B team. The club picked up Marcus Forss from West Brom in 2017 when he was released and after graduating through the B team he scored the winning goal in the play-off semi-final against Bournemouth last season.
The club also uses analysis in its recruitment system with stats like xG (Expected Goals) and xT (Expected Threat) vitally important in the evaluation of a player. This is best demonstrated by the club’s ability to consistently find lethal strikers for the first team.
After promotion to the Championship in 2014, the Bees signed Andre Gray from Luton for roughly £500,000. Gray went on to lead the team with 17 goals in all competitions and was sold after just one season to Burnley for £11 million. It took the club two years to fully replace him but they did in 2017 with Neal Maupay, who they signed from St Etienne for £1.8 million. The Frenchman lasted two seasons at Griffin Park, scoring 25 goals in his second season before being bought by Brighton for £20 million.
Brentford replaced him with another man they had signed in 2017 for £6.5 million from Exeter City, Ollie Watkins. Unsurprisingly, Watkins matched Maupay’s goal tally of 25 goals from a year before and earnt himself a £30 million move to Aston Villa in the summer of 2020. Watkins was then somehow topped by Ivan Toney who was signed for £5 million from Peterborough and preceded to score a Championship record, 31 goals last season helping Brentford reach the Premier League for the very first time.
The Bees also regularly sign players from FC Midtjylland, the other club that Benham owns in Denmark, who have been a proving ground for his methods, winning their first ever Danish Superliga in 2015. Box to box midfielder Frank Onyeka, is a great example of this method of recruitment.
The club also has a brand new stadium now and Benham and Ankersen have put in place an infrastructure that should secure long term success for Brentford.
Whilst this method of running a club is unlikely to take hold with some of the country’s richest clubs, if the Bees prolong their stay in the top flight you could see some of the smaller clubs begin to adopt the moneyball system.
Even Liverpool, one of the biggest clubs in the world, have Michael Edwards and the transfer committee who are deeply influenced by the data and analysis department at Anfield when signing players. The Reds have lifted a Champions League and a Premier League in the last three years which is proof enough that moneyball could work right at the top level.
The most chilling line delivered in the movie by Henry to Beane is “anyone who is not tearing up their team right now and rebuilding it, using your model, they’re dinosaurs”.
The winds of change are blowing in football and we’re here for it.
Vive la revolution.