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A big Beesotted welcome to Alex Dalton, who has contributed his first article to the fanzine. Thanks for sharing your thorough and well thought out views on the situation at Brentford FC right now.

Much has been written and speculated about regarding the departure of the immensely popular Mark Warburton. Many of us Brentford fans might have been left scratching our heads after the news that the mighty Rangers were taking a punt on a man who has only been a head coach for two years and was being replaced by a virtual unknown (in this country anyway) in Marinus Dijkhuizen (I challenge the Ealing Road song composers to come up with a fancy ditty to this one!!).

Whether we will really know the full story of the breakdown remains to be seen. How big a row was there about our ambition in the transfer market when Matthew Benham was said to have wanted to “go for it” and Warburton wanted to continue with a settled squad in January? Was there any truth in that at all or just tabloid sensationalism?

Had Warburton started thinking his future might lie elsewhere? A man raised in the cut and thrust of the financial markets knows you cash in when your stock is at its highest.

Were there really irreconcilable differences regarding future player recruitment and the now infamous “mathematical modelling” the club are said to have adopted?

It seems strange that Warburton – let’s not forget – had been at the club a long time before taking the manager’s role. Was he really unaware that Benham would want to operate in this way in the near future? In fact, it would almost seem absurd to think that Warburton in his role of Technical Director hadn’t had many conversations on this subject before taking the manager’s role. It’s no secret that Warburton had a lot to do with player recruitment before taking the top job, and personally, I feel one of the reasons the transition from Rosler went so well. Was it such a hard a thing to swallow that Benham might want the new manager to allow the same amount of input as perhaps Warburton had in the role?

Whatever the reasons, Warburton handled the last few months of the campaign superbly and we played some of the best, if not the best, football in the division. A hugely likeable man, let’s hope he gets Rangers back into the top flight sooner rather than later. I’m sure everybody wishes him well.

So where does it leave us going into a huge season in the Championship? As I write this in early July the signs seem to be hugely positive.

As much as we all admired the style of play under Warburton and Weir, by the end of the season you couldn’t help but think it could really have been even better. I lost count of the times, normally after a heavy or needless defeat, that I heard the management say “we will learn from our mistakes”. It started to rankle with me during the last few months of the season because I’m not sure we really ever did?

The problems we had over the course of the first half of the season continued right through to the limp defeat at Boro.

It doesn’t take a hugely complex mathematical model (in fact the league table will do) to work out we conceded far too many goals in games we dominated. The same can be said about goals scored. Simply not enough for the amount of possession we enjoyed in the majority of games. In tight games against the better sides we had to take more chances. In the end this cost us dearly. I still don’t know how we didn’t beat Derby away by at least 3 clear goals.

Defensively I thought we had an issue with the centre back pairing all year. Warburton started the year with Tarks and Craig, and although we did concede some sloppy goals, I actually thought they did OK in what we all thought would be a really tricky start to life in the championship as players found their feet and their confidence.

Craig lost his place after the red card against Birmingham and Dean came in. In the next 4 league games we conceded 10 goals. This was also at a time when McCormack was playing right-back until his injury at Watford. We never saw McCormack feature at right-back again, largely due to the hugely impressive way Odubajo slotted in. It seems cruel to say (because everybody loves Alan McCormack don’t they) but if ever there was a player who didn’t appear to be able to make the step up a level, it seemed to be evident here. The improvement at right-back was more luck (unlucky for McCormack) than judgment. I hasten to add I’ve always believed McCormack to be much more effective in midfield anyway but we were always desperately light in numbers at the back and presumably Warburton originally saw Odubajo’s strengths as more of a threat going forward. In the championship though, pace in the full-back position proved to be a must and Odubajo, for the most part, shone.

When Dean was dropped after the Middlesbrough debacle the ship steadied. It took until January for Warburton to settle on a pairing and he pretty much stuck to it until the end of the season despite some real howlers and gifts. I always thought the best pairing by far was Tarks and Craig so in a nod to the new management style, I thought i’d apply the “moneyball” (anybody who hasn’t a clue what that means should google “moneyball”. It’s the name of the book that made statistical based recruitment in sport famous) analysis to our defensive partnerships and see if the stats backed it up.

We used 4 central defensive pairings in the championship.

  • Tarkowski/Craig
  • Tarkowski/Dean
  • Craig/Dean
  • Tarkowski/Moor

We’ll ignore the Tarkowski/Moor partnership because they only played 3 league games together and for the purposes of this exercise we will only be looking at league games and the play-off ties.

For the other pairings I entered all the data (I wrote down with a pen) into my complex mathematical model (notebook) and came out with the following statistics.

  • The Tarkowski/Craig partnership played 10 games, conceding 11 goals at an average of 1.1 goals per game.
  • The Tarkowski/Dean partnership played 23 games, conceding 31 goals at an average of 1.35 goals per game.
  • The Craig/Dean partnership played 12 games, conceding 20 goals at an average of 1.67 goals per game.

Then I looked at how many goals each player conceded whilst in the side.

  • Tarkowski – 36 games. Conceded 45 goals at an average of 1.25 goals conceded per game.
  • Craig – 22 games. Conceded 31 goals at an average of 1.4 goals per game.
  • Dean – 35 games. Conceded 51 goals at an average of 1.46 goals per game.

So, although not a huge difference between the effectiveness of all the partnerships, it did seem to show that Tarkowski was our most effective centre-back and Dean the least.

As a team, we scored on average 1.63 goals per game but conceded 1.31 goals per game.

To put that into perspective, the eventual winners of the play-offs Norwich, on average, conceded 1.04 goals per game and scored on average 1.92 goals per game. The defensive partnership closest to matching Norwich’s defensive performance was the Tarkowski/Craig one.

So, have we “learnt from our mistakes” here? Will we be better equipped to bring those numbers more in sync with the Norwich of last season? Do these sorts of stats actually feed the recruitment process?

Well, if our summer recruitment drive (so far) is anything to go by, then it seems they might do.

At time of writing we have just spent a club record fee on the highly rated centre-back Andreas Bjelland who comes with big experience and is surely lined up to play alongside Tarkowski, giving him the mixture of calm (that Craig provided) and aggression (that Dean provided) that will perhaps see him develop in the way a lot of fans think he can.

In addition to Bjelland, we have also signed Yoann Barbet who Wikipedia also says plays at centre-back. There really does seem to be a big drive to try and sort out the defensive frailties we showed too often last year.

It remains to be seen whether the defensive midfield positions will be monopolised by “Dave” and Douglas. On his day, Douglas is the heartbeat of this Brentford side but I felt his impact dropped significantly at certain times during the season. I’m not totally sure this was all Dougie’s fault as Warburton seemed to like using Douglas in this odd second striker role when we attacked. Time and time again Douglas found himself (obviously instructed) occupying one of the opposition centre-backs and trying to drag them out of position.

Presumably this was a ploy to give our lone striker a little extra space and compete with a single defender rather than be crowded out by two, and to also provide some sort of threat aerially. That we rarely, if ever, crossed early from wide positions seemed to make this tactic even more bizarre.

The trouble with playing Dougie ahead of the ball was that when we lost possession and a team broke quickly or played a quick direct ball to their forwards (which they often did!) we were more often than not asking “Dave” to cover everything.

To me, Douglas is so much better behind the ball, orchestrating, breaking up play and driving the team forward and arriving late to provide the aerial threat that we cried out for.

Obviously nobody really knows who might still come in to help with defensive duties, or indeed the way Dijkhuizen wants to play, but it’s hard to imagine Douglas being deployed in this way or perhaps as often as he was last year.

So what about the goals? There’s no doubt we will miss Pritchard this year. His 12 goals will need to be replaced just to get us back to the tally of last year. The imminent (if transfer rumours are to be believed) arrival of Josh McEachran would seem to be a natural replacement and with the deal proposed to be permanent we can feel very optimistic that our attacking, passing style will be maintained.

With the highly rated Lewis MacLeod, Stuart Dallas improving with each game, Jota benefiting from a full season in England under his belt, and the brilliant Alan Judge, creatively we seem to be the envy of the division.

It’s the centre-forward position that really does need addressing. At times, Gray looked fantastic and I’m sure a full season in the championship will improve him no end but he needs help. Too often last year, Warburton seemed at pains to give Gray a rest regardless of his confidence or form. Not until Long arrived did we look to have a viable replacement despite some nice cameo’s from Smith.

We lacked a plan B. You could probably call banging long balls up to Nick Proschwitz in the last 10 minutes as our original plan B but thankfully that experiment didn’t last too long. A genuine goal-scorer who can push Gray for a start, or even start alongside him, will surely be looked at before the season starts.

Playing in the manner we do, keeping possession and unlocking defences with quick intricate passing is tough week in, week out. Another area where we simply did not improve throughout the season was our return from dead-ball situations. In games with the top sides that are well organized, sometimes they make the difference. I’m struggling to remember a single goal scored from a corner or indirect free-kick?

With this in mind, it was hugely encouraging to see the club announce that Gianni Vio has come from Inter Milan to work with the squad on set-pieces. Also interesting to note is that Bartek Sylwestrzak has been promoted from the youth team to work with players on striking the ball (something Gray might’ve benefited from a couple of times last year!).

So, huge anticipation for the start of the new season and when you consider the doom and gloom around Griffin Park the evening of the Watford game, and the loss of a hugely popular figure in Mark Warburton, it does genuinely seem the club are certainly trying to learn from their mistakes.

All the signs point towards another really good crack at the championship. And who knows, there might just be something in this statistical modeling too?

Alex Dalton