Brentford is on a meteoric rise from league 2 just a few years ago, to playing as a mainstay in the Premier League. The bees are a fitting name for a team that individually may be smaller than the giants of the era, but working together they can overcome the worst of odds.
The success behind their three promotional campaigns in 12 years is a testament of their incredible transfer policy and diligent contract negotiations. In an era of management teams and administrators trying to replicate the profitable success of Billy Bean’s “Moneyball” of the Oakland A’s, Brentford leads the line of Moneyball in the new era. The Brentford squad outperformed their perceived value to finish a season with such an unlikely result it would only happen once in 4,000 seasons.
Moneyball is a lazy way to explain Brentford because their success is now a replication of continued success while moving through the English pyramid. Their approach to transfers and contract negotiations remove much of the human emotion that other negotiators get wrapped up in. Brentford’s policy is largely based on holistic mathematical and statistical modeling that improves in accuracy over time as the team adds to their database of players - successes and failures.
Unafraid to sell star players like Ollie Watkins (£30.6) if the price is right, and unafraid to make educated deals on players like Ivan Toney (£5.04) from Peterborough in the same transfer window. Brentford’s sustained success may make it come as a surprise that they have moved on from players like James Tarkowski, Andre Gray, Neal Maupay, and Chris Mepham who are all big players in their own right.
You may see similarities to the way of doing business to that of a professional gambler, and there is a great reason for that. Club owner Matthew Benham is a former professional gambler and has spoken about moneyball comparisons in the past stating: “The label can be confusing because people think it is using any stats rather than trying to use them in a scientific way. If I’m right 51% of the time then I make money.” Calling Benham a gambler is probably not quite the right way to describe this genius who made his millions through a company called Smartodds. Smartodds was a company that used statisticians to calculate the outcome of soccer matches to gain an edge on book makers.
The fascinating thing to the observers from the sideline is that this approach that got them quickly to the top division is working wonders in the Premier division. The co-director Rasmus Ankerson is looking to “beat Goliath using different weapons”, and that weapon is data analytics - analytics that help them find what he calls “whispering talents”. Under-performing, high-potential players that nobody knows about yet make us the bulk of their squad. A squad that in the 2021-22 season was nine times more efficient in points won per £ spent than Manchester United. Brentford won 2.5 points per million £ spent, a figure that is so far away from every other team that the chances of this happening was 1 in 4,000. Leeds and Brighton were the only other squads above 1 point per million £ spent, with Manchester United, Chelsea, and Everton leading the pack of losers.
Thanks in part to multiple studies on the correlation of squad payroll and league performance we know that the closest link to team success is the worth of your squad’s contracts. Brentford was at the very bottom of that list in the 21/22 Premier League season and still managed to finish 13th, 11 points above the relegation spot, and only 10 points away from a European place.
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Ankerson noted the sustainability of success is just as important as the current evaluation of what success looks like.
“When we evaluate how well we do, we don’t look at the league table. We look at these underlying ratings which we trust more. They’re more predictive for where we’re going to go.
“Because of all the randomness in football, you can overachieve with 15 points or underachieve with 15 points. The league table isn’t always so reflective of how strong you actually are.
“Thomas Frank lost eight of his first ten games as Brentford head coach. We didn’t panic and now things are going a lot better.
“It’s about knowing when to stick to the plan and when to drive change. We have a much more rational and objective approach than the classic emotional approach in football.”
“The key is being able to identify undervalued talent in the market, develop them, and then sell them on for profit, gradually building more value into the squad and gradually increasing the level of the squad. Now we come to a place where we have a huge amount of value in the squad and we’re good enough to compete at the top of the league.”
Brentford have not just competed, but they’ve now demolished the competition when it comes to efficiency by utilizing a combination of advanced scouting intelligence, comparative league evaluations, and tightly-controlled transfer policy.