Ivan Toney, a wantaway owner and struggling signings - why Brentford might be in big trouble

It may seem strange to worry about a club just one game into a new season, and even stranger still when the club in question won that game – but fresh off the back of a relatively close shave with relegation and with continued doubts over the future of their star striker, are Brentford struggling to maintain forward momentum?

That Brentford are even in the Premier League in the first place remains a minor miracle and a testament to years of hugely impressive recruitment and some quite brilliant coaching by Thomas Frank and his predecessors. This is a side that had to earn their seat at the top table the hard way, with relatively limited resources but a clear vision for how a club should be run.

Before promotion, players were bought cheap and sold for more, and then that profit was reinvested using a data-driven scouting model which allowed them, for instance, to quickly replace Ollie Watkins with Ivan Toney and bank a profit in the region of £25m. They became the model for how to get a smaller club up the league ladder without breaking the bank, while Frank has become one of the most well-respected coaches in the country after taking over from Dean Smith. Brentford have scarcely put a foot wrong – so why does it feel like they might be going backwards?

Last season’s struggle plays into the narrative, of course. Brentford were flirting with the relegation battle for much of the season before pulling away late on, finishing 16th but with a healthy 13-point buffer between the drop zone, but that gap tells us more about the deficiencies of the three relegated sides than it does about the superiority of Brentford. They won just five of the 21 matches they played between the turn of the year and the end of the season, with all of their victories coming against bottom-half teams. Their 39 points would have been a more dangerous total in a more competitive year.

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That may well not be this year, of course, but there is a sense that the newly-promoted sides are slightly better equipped for survival this time around and that the fight for survival could be rather tougher. Brentford, meanwhile, do not seem to have improved substantially over the past couple of seasons despite the historical strength of their recruitment model.

The 2-1 win over Crystal Palace on the opening day of the season may make such concerns seem a little overcooked, and so they may prove. The game was even, with Palace having more possession, territory and chances (even excluding Eberechi Eze’s controversially-disallowed goal) but ultimately it was a thoroughly respectable win against a very decent side and a good way to start the season. Equally, a defeat to Liverpool on Sunday would scarcely raise too many eyebrows given the gap in terms of resources.

But the squad that played against Palace was a team which has not really changed or progressed over the past year or two. The midfield three of Vitaly Janelt, Christian Nørgaard and Mathias Jensen have all been at the club since 2020 and for all their undeniable work ethic and energy, they are relatively limited players that can surely be improved upon over the course of four years. Up front, Kevin Schade was the newest arrival to get a start, and he has still only scored twice since signing in the 2022/23 season. There is a sense that the squad has not really been refreshed in a little while and only two players who have signed in the past three transfer window - goalkeeper Mark Flekken and defender Nathan Collins – were in the starting eleven last Sunday.

Fábio Carvalho, who came off the bench, is a fresh arrival and based on his form on loan in the Championship last season he may well prove to be a very good acquisition, but otherwise there have been an uncharacteristically large number of (relative) failures among recent signings. Schade, though young, has yet to kick on and neither has Mikkel Damsgaard or Keane Lewis-Potter. The next generation of Brentford stalwarts has yet to develop, and there is only so long that can continue to be the case.

There has been some bad luck, granted – the talented Aaron Hickey has spent a lot of time on the treatment table, the exciting Antonio Nusa failed a medical in January and club record signing Igor Thiago suffered a serious injury in pre-season – but it looks worryingly as though the success of Brentford’s data-driven recruitment has started to stall out a little, or as though they have bought too young, too often, leaving them with a mixture of gradually ageing senior players and those still developing with nothing in between ready to fill the gap. And then there is the Toney situation.

Brentford’s most consistent goal threat since signing from Peterborough United, the England international was left out against Crystal Palace due to the ongoing transfer saga which could see him leave for Saudi Arabian side Al-Ahli, Chelsea, or anyone else who decides to finally match Brentford’s supposed £50m valuation. Losing important players is part of the cycle for the Premier League’s smaller teams, of course, but his departure would be a bitter blow – and if he somehow stays, Brentford will almost certainly lose him for free next summer anyway.

The fact that his nominal replacement, Thiago, is unlikely to play in 2024 after knee injury certainly doesn’t help, but if Toney departs it would leave the Bees’ attacking depth looking worryingly thin. If either Yoane Wissa or Bryan Mbeumo ended up missing game time, the situation would become pretty desperate, and there is every chance that if Toney does move, there will be limited time to spend the money earned. The way forward is a little murky.

Thomas Frank is, of course, a superb manager and has proven that he can work with the squad Brentford have. He may well be able to get enough of a tune out of the team to keep them up even without Toney’s goals, and it’s a fool who would bet against him based on past evidence. But the worry isn’t just about this season, but about how long that squad can maintain standards without younger and more gifted players coming through and claiming their own starting places – and Frank may not be around forever, either, with plenty of bigger teams gradually taking notice. Brentford have recruited their coaches well, too, but the strength of their team is such that would false move in the dugout could be extremely costly.

There are effectively two ways to view the current situation with Brentford’s transfer business - either it has fallen off and there are problems with the model that they are using that need to be correct very quickly, or it is still working just fine and a relative lack of recent success in the market can just be blamed on bad luck, injuries and young players taking time to develop, in which case one has to worry about the future of the owner who put the model in place.

Matthew Benham, who made his money in sports betting and who was the driving force behind the data-first approach the club has taken in recent years as well as their primary source of funding, has appointed Rothschilds to manage the sale of a stake in the club. He is reportedly open to selling either a majority or minority stake in order to bring fresh investment into the club, but either way there is a strong chance that he will not be at the helm in the near future - and new owners may well not see as much value in trusting the data as Benham has. New ownership always carries risks, in any case, but there are very few owners who have trodded a path similar to Benham and there would be a high chance of upheaval if and when he does make way.

Maybe this is to paint too bleak of a picture, and maybe Benham, Frank and Brentford are due a little more credit as a whole. Maybe Brentford will be just fine this season and then all the younger players that haven’t had their star turn yet will come good. But maybe, just maybe, this is an astonishingly successful project which is starting to sputter out while the club are precariously close to the weaker sides in the division. It would be a crying shame if that were the case – seeing a sensibly-managed club succeed to this extent in the chaotic and cash-fuelled modern game has been a pleasant tonic. Let’s hope it’s a while before the first Match of the Day pundit curses them with that old line: “They’ll be fine...”