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Must be fun being a Brentford fan

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On 16/05/2022 at 16:40, sgncfc said:

Surely we are already using them as our model? They started it first and have 3 or 4 years on us - we got a surprise promotion and haven't kicked on like we should have done, but we are still doing the same things, other than our SD lost his bottle and sacked our manager so we probably now have to start again.

They have gradually improved their squad over 7 or 8 years so that they now have a number of "weapons" - you can't call them a one man team just because they had Eriksen for 5 months. If they lose Toney they can easily replace him in their system. They still have several other quality players who have stepped up this season.

I find their coach very annoying, but I can't deny that he knows what he's doing - he destroyed Lampard tactically. Compare that with how we went about playing against the 10 men of Newcastle, in very similar circumstances.

They've made a substantial transfer profit over the last 8 years - Watkins, Benrahma, Maupay, Mepham, Konsa, Gray, Jota etc. They frequently sold their best players but they replaced them - we didn't. Their assets now include Raya, Toney, Henry, Mbweno, Jensen - all players who would walk into our team - collectively £100m? (Note that I don't include Ajer, who is not in their class and never will be but still cost them £13m which they would probably get back).

I'd say they've had a pretty good season, and they are miles and miles ahead of any of the teams who will be promoted this season.

Our squad continues to improve too - despite what some on here would seem to believe - but we are hampered by that lack of game changers at the moment. Maybe some of them will become that. The Brentford team had two more years to develop in the Championship.

The fundamental issue though, is 'the model' or whichever way we brand it, requires a SD or a senior football person to be in it for the long term. If Webber goes, which sadly seems only a matter of time, the model goes too. Delia and MWJ are not going to oversee the model and successful transition and continuity of it. 

After Webber, a new model is constructed with whoever takes the reigns. Granted it could be very similar, but the fact the continuity is broken means it's a reset. 

If that makes any sense..

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36 minutes ago, Creedence Clearwater Couto said:

The fundamental issue though, is 'the model' or whichever way we brand it, requires a SD or a senior football person to be in it for the long term. If Webber goes, which sadly seems only a matter of time, the model goes too. Delia and MWJ are not going to oversee the model and successful transition and continuity of it. 

After Webber, a new model is constructed with whoever takes the reigns. Granted it could be very similar, but the fact the continuity is broken means it's a reset. 

If that makes any sense..

I’m not sure your model is broken unless it really is entirely reliant on Webber. If the model is robust it can withstand a change in DoF. Indeed it probably needs to have included plans for that very situation. The model doesn’t seem from the outside very different to that of Brentford, Southampton or even Liverpool or Man City beyond some arguably poor decision-making (choice of players, not having proper buy in from manager on players bought, prioritising investment in facilities over players/establishing at the aimed for level). That might point just to having the right model run by the wrong person. Or possibly that the underlying business is reliant on yoyoing and doesn’t have a plan either for establishing in the PL or being sustainable as a Championship club (eg because of timidity/impecuniosity/conservatism of ownership and believing establishing is too expensive and the business fundamentals too weak to bear staying down). 
 

Perhaps the boldest move would be to relax a little on going all out for another top 2 finish and instead take longer term decisions  to build a team that could go up immediately but would bear missing out and be stronger after another season of going in the right way. I think that would work well for you on the basis of having bought young players for the future who Webber believes are capable of becoming quality PL players with time. So give them time. 

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On 15/05/2022 at 20:12, Mengo said:

Good piece of intelligent football business 👏 getting Eriksen on board, I would say. 

We reportedly tried to get him too... but were up against it with the connections he has at Brentford and the wages. 

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On 15/05/2022 at 20:55, Making Plans said:

I would love to experience the second season syndrome and a second season's Premier League money

To be fair, we dodged second season syndrome and got to third season syndrome last time we did more than one season up. 

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2 hours ago, Creedence Clearwater Couto said:

The fundamental issue though, is 'the model' or whichever way we brand it, requires a SD or a senior football person to be in it for the long term. If Webber goes, which sadly seems only a matter of time, the model goes too. Delia and MWJ are not going to oversee the model and successful transition and continuity of it. 

After Webber, a new model is constructed with whoever takes the reigns. Granted it could be very similar, but the fact the continuity is broken means it's a reset. 

If that makes any sense..

I don't think that's true. I could be wrong here, but maybe one of the other long term posters will be able to confirm that I believe when Hamilton was appointed they spoke about wanting a European model of football at the club with a sporting director and a head coach. I think there was talk that the plan was Hamilton would eventually oversee the role of sporting director with Worthington as head coach. Unfortunately, whilst he brought in players from Europe, Hamilton wasn't able to get them to work and some of them seemed well short of levels needed, even for back then - though some were good.

I think at a later date there was an interview with Smith and Wyn-Jones where they said they wanted to pursue that European model football club with a sporting director etc but that they were struggling to find managers who would be willing to work under such a model.

Now, I could just be misremembering this, but if I'm not, then actually, I think at board level, they are more committed to this type of model than perhaps it seems. We almost had that set up with Lambert, Culverhouse and Karsa, only not to director level. Karsa handled the scouting I seem to remember.

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1 minute ago, littleyellowbirdie said:

To be fair, we dodged second season syndrome and got to third season syndrome last time we did more than one season up. 

We managed a sort of weird magical middle ground. Whilst our players were heroes to us, all bar Hoolahan, were seemingly not coveted by any other premier league club so we never had anyone swoop in to buy any of our players. That made a huge difference. What sunk us was Hughton ripping apart the squad and replacing players he moved on with players not as good.

Holt, Morison, Martin and Jackson replaced by Hooper, RVW and Elmander... We could have kept Holt and forgot about Elmander. Martin is superior to Hooper. Imagine RVW with those sorts of players still in the squad.

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29 minutes ago, chicken said:

We reportedly tried to get him too... but were up against it with the connections he has at Brentford and the wages. 

I'm sure a few teams were after him. Unfortunately ,we seem not that attractive in the big picture. Undoubtedly the connections were a big factor. Imagine he had come here . Great player.

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9 minutes ago, Mengo said:

I'm sure a few teams were after him. Unfortunately ,we seem not that attractive in the big picture. Undoubtedly the connections were a big factor. Imagine he had come here . Great player.

Yup, location too, considering he supposedly would like a return to Spurs... 

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I think it's good that Brentford have stayed up, it would be very dispiriting if all 3 promoted teams all go down in my opinion 

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On 15/05/2022 at 19:55, Making Plans said:

I would love to experience the second season syndrome and a second season's Premier League money

Maybe go and support Brentford?

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I don't think our model is broken - but it's clearly gone backwards a bit this season. We don't yet know if any of last summer's permanent signings will ever be successful - given that we do know it takes time to settle, I still have big hopes for Rashica, Tzolis and Sargent.

Plus we have some seriously promising young players who could end up being worth proper money - Omabamidele, Idah, Springett, Rowe, Gibbs, Clarke etc.

Most of the rest of our squad are still £1m-£5m players, some a bit more. Compare that with where we were four years ago. Yes, it's been up and down, but we're still miles ahead of many. It looks like Watford, for instance, are about to start the same journey and most of the Championship teams will be moving the same way given the proposed changes to FFP.

 

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