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Beesotted contributor, Carl Massey, reminds us that there is method behind the madness that some see when a player is on the verge of leaving Brentford Football Club.

The team currently sat second in the Premier League find themselves in the same boat as Brentford – is that a little odd? Not really. January brings with it at least two guarantees. The first is that teams will overspend, much like people will be guaranteed to over-eat at Christmas. The second, is that unless you support one of the super clubs in the top flight, you will proceed through January, afraid that the vultures are circling and your top talent is about to be ripped away.

Leicester City are currently two points off top spot after, so far, an epic season that has seen them break the monopoly of the big clubs after putting real and persistent pressure at the top of the Premier League. But is their season about to be derailed by the greedy elite, or can they hold onto their prize assets?

It seems these days that a good six months is all it takes for a player to double or triple his wages by moving to a league rival. Jamie Vardy and Riyad Mahrez are a case in point. Man City, Man United and Chelsea are just three of the clubs rumoured to be interested in snapping up Leicester’s goal-scorers. I suspect neither player is particularly wanted by any of them, however, a raid will just ensure the status quo remains and the team from the East Midlands are prevented from doing the unthinkable, and actually winning the title.

So, how does that tie in to Brentford. Well, the answer is at first obvious. Burnley and Sheffield Wednesday have reportedly made bids for James Tarkowski and Alan Judge respectively, and in doing so, have sent a message to both players that they could be set to double or even triple their wages. It will mean that this window is again set to be a fraught one as we look to desperately keep hold of our top players and maintain a push to the top flight. Or do we????

Matthew Benham may not like either himself, or Brentford, being referred to as a Moneyball club, but it is inevitable. Firstly, let me say that the reporters who have written countless articles about Brentford copying the Moneyball system because of our approach to stats, are either too lazy to look at the real/ bigger picture, too inept to notice, or maybe just not interested enough. When you read the book and do a bit more than basic research, it is actually quite apparent that the club is looking to do a similar thing to the Oakland A’s. But it is about far more than just statistics. To add a bit of context, and for those that perhaps know little about Baseball, Billy Beane, Oakland Athletics or Moneyball, I will do my best to explain.

The Oakland Athletics and Baseball are in many ways very similar to Brentford, but also very different. The A’s were one of Baseball’s poor teams and, in a sport dominated by huge franchises such as the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox and LA Dodgers (to name a few), and it had become extremely hard to compete. Whilst Baseball teams conduct trades etc they are not like you would have in Football. To start off, each team, each year, is involved in a draft. This is held over one day, but is the culmination of a year-long search for America’s top College and High School players.

On draft day, each team has a set number of picks where they select which players they want. The worst performing teams get the first pick of the players. This means that, each year, every club has new talent coming through, which is farmed out to their development teams. Most players picked up in the draft will go to a single A baseball club (think Hampton and Richmond) effectively managed by the big league franchise. As that player progresses, they are moved up to double A (an Aldershot, Woking, Tranmere) or triple A teams (Wycombe, Barnet etc) and eventually into the big leagues.

The problem with this is the shockingly low percentage of players picked up in the draft making the big leagues. They farm their players out and cultivate only the top talent. Much like what Chelsea are doing with their loan players. To supplement their young players, teams will trade with each other. There are no transfer fees involved however and player contracts seem to be worth a great deal more than in other sports. If a team trades with another, it is usually to free up wages for them to bring in someone else.

What Billy Bean did was recognise that his Oakland A’s could not compete and pay the same kind of wages that the richer teams could. Not only that, but being a failed major League player himself, he knew and could spot the deficiencies in the system. That’s where the stats come in and of course it is here that the similarities with Brentford morph. What Billy Beane did first of all was to hire the right people. Paul DePosta was his right hand man, and together they ran the Oakland A’s. Beane was the team’s General Manager. There was a team manager that was meant to run the club on the field. In reality, this was Beane. He called the shots and he may have upset lots of people in the process, but he got results. Using stats in such depth and in a way that they had never been used before gave him an edge over other teams. He was spotting things in the stats (or rather his team were) that others either couldn’t see, or simply ignored. I’m not sure elements of this will resonate with Brentford fans given some of the things the media have said but Beane was often questioned heavily from those within the game for his approach.

So this is great in spotting undervalued talent. It is what Beane did next with it that is what is most relevant at this current time for us. Billy Beane not only spotted deficiencies in the scouting and selection of players. He made the biggest use of it in the trade market. What he did was to recognise some areas of Baseball were hugely over valued, and some, where hugely undervalued. Relief pitchers are guys who come in for literally a few balls at the end of a game and look to see a game out. Their expertise lies in dealing with the clutch situations (Beane refused to believe and had the stats to back it up, that there was any correlation in how players performed in the “clutch” situation).

Because relief pitcher were, because of the stats they were measured by, grossly overvalued, he decided that rather than eradicate this, he would look to exploit it. He would frequently use a good pitcher from his minor league system and turn them into a closer. It may be that these guys pitching were good, but not ready to pitch seven or eight innings in the major leagues. Or it could be that they were already decent pitchers in the major leagues, but not a star. He would put them in the relief, or closing, spot in the line-up and, because they were good at their jobs, would rack up the good stats.

These pitchers were measured by “saves”, in effect, how many times they come into a game with their team ahead and go on to win a game. With other teams basing their signings on the amount of “saves” they made, Beane was basically inflating their worth to other organisations. Beane could trade these players, and in return, get far better players in much more vital positions – offense was what won games in his opinion. Beane used a system called “selling the closer” to generate funds to sign better players.

So, now I’ve bored you all with a lesson in Billy Beane and Baseball, how does this relate to Brentford and the trauma of the transfer window?

Matthew Benham has been targeting players that his team have (allegedly) spotted something in, that others haven’t. We can’t say that this has been an ultimate success. Andy Gogia and Konstantine Kerschbaumer are just two players that have come in from lesser-known teams, with supposedly great stats, but have failed to cement a place in the first team. But we would be mad to think that Brentford’s system only relates to players they’ve signed this season. Tarkowski and Judge, you could argue, are prime examples of the system working it’s magic. Andre Gray is an even finer example, as of course is Jota.

I’ll ask you, just for a moment, to take emotion out of it. Look at this from a business point of view. Not only that, but also look at it from a development perspective. Take a player from another side who you see something good in, such as Andre Gray. You pay a nominal fee, supplemented by add-ons, to secure his services. The immediate impact on Brentford is simply a small outlay. £500K in the Championship is nothing. You can ignore the add-ons. At no point do they “cost” you anything. They may effect total profit, but they don’t impact what you pay out. So, at relatively low risk, you now have a player who shows his potential and scores a few goals.

The “goals” stat is similar to Billy Bean’s view of home runs. Home runs, Bean argued, was vastly overvalued. Beane was more interested in how many times a player “got on base” This meant reaching 1st, 2nd or 3rd base. He argued that the more you got on base, the more you’d score in the long run. Benham has often said, scoring goals is less important than how many chances you create for yourself and others. A high conversion rate isn’t always a good thing for Benham. So, when Benham signed Gray, he was taking a small risk – one season later, that risk has made the club a hugely significant sum of money. This money can be re-invested in more low risk players.

And the impact this has on Brentford? Well, that’s obvious isn’t it? We lost goals didn’t we? Just like Billy Bean and his Oakland A’s, we sold our top talent, yet find ourselves on the periphery of the play-off places. Season after season Beane sold off ‘the family silver’ and brought in players nobody cared about. I’ve no doubt that Beane’s approach to Baseball trades frustrated many, but yet he continued to churn out results.

I can clearly see that Benham, once he removes emotion from the equation, will look at these player sales as a success. When we sold Gray, lost Pritchard (although a loanee), released Douglas and flogged Dallas, we gave up a huge amount of goals from our team. Yet we find ourselves top scorers in the division. Of course, we’re not where we were last year and, as a result, our defensive record is pretty poor, but to isolate the Gray sale, and say it will cost us goals, has proven incorrect. And, if we lose Judge, will we lose goals and assists? Probably not I would argue. What we will lose is his dynamism, effort, general effectiveness all over the pitch and a genuinely talented and exciting player to watch.

What me mustn’t do, and again this is something that Billy Beane did well, is to not just bring in young, not yet ready players. We must supplement the squad with players that are ready in the here and now. I suspect that’s what Benham has done in Colin, Woods, McEachran etc (and intended to do with Bjellend, whilst taking a gamble on Gogia, Kerschbaumer and possibly Hoffmann.

Vibe is probably the exception to the rule, in that he is a proven goal-scorer, but is struggling to replicate the form he found in Sweden – but we cannot forget that he has not had a break from playing for a solid year. He is, though, undoubtedly a good player, and it just might take time for us to see him reach his full potential next season. If he fails to do that, make no mistake, Benham will be ruthless and move him on to make way for a better player, or possibly a gamble.

Of course, I’m not saying that I want Judge to go simply to prove the method is working, in fact, Alan Judge is one player I am desperate to keep. I’ve no doubt that Benham does too, but everyone has a price and, having signed him for what I suspect was a much smaller fee than the one he could be sold for, it will be good business if he does go, of that you can be guaranteed.

As we enter another transfer window period it’s difficult to feel anything but trepidation, especially for teams like us – but as clubs like Southampton have shown – you can sell good players and replace with better for less. It is a tough time, but just when it feels like the footballing world is trying to destroy our team, I’m trying to remember that there is a system in place to ensure we remain competitive – and it’s far better to have faith in that system than to lose your mind with frustration, surely?

It’s going to be a long month alright, but we are a work in progress, and this is just the start!

Up the Bees

Carl Massey