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Billy Grant throw a few coals on an ever-smoking January fire as he fires the flames on Brentford’s transfer activity – which seems to be moving about turn and back to Europe again after a number after a number of attempts to buy over-inflated home-based players have seen the moves go flat.

Brentford are back scouring the European market this transfer window – despite the doors being slammed firmly shut on the European door by Theresa May this morning – with a few players identified as potential future Brentford stars.

And with the transfer market going absolutely bonkers in the UK, the Bees are once again looking to find a balance between homegrown talent and talent from overseas, going back to familiar territory – Holland – to line up their first European catch of the window in the next couple of weeks (more on that potential transfer below).

After the exodus of a number of key players a few seasons ago – Andre Gray, Moses Odubajo, Stuart Dallas – Brentford delved quite heavily into the European market. After raising the bar by reaching the Championship Playoffs, The Bees found it harder to compete in the UK transfer market where our opposition were watching our every move and football agents were using Brentford as transfer-bait to up the fees of their clients by creating bidding wars.

In came the likes of Andy Gogia, Andreas Bjelland, Yoann Barbet, Konstantin Kerschbaumer, Lasse Vibe, Phillip Hofmann and Maxime Colin with Ryan Woods and Josh McEachran (who was actually plying his trade in Holland) being the only ‘UK-grounded’ players bought in that summer.

The Bees bosses admitted they made a misjudgment. Many of the European players brought in took the best part of a season to acclimatise to the change in football style – with the side lacking balance. Some people quite rightfully questioned the quality of the European signings. However, whereas there are still question marks on the likes of Philip Hofmann, Andy Gogia and Konstantin Kerschbaumer, as time has gone one it’s hard to argue that Lasse Vibe, Maxime Colin, Yoann Barbet and Andreas Bjelland have not shown quality and added a new dimension to this Brentford team.

Not a bad percentage considering Lasse Vibe, Maxime Colin, Yoann Barbet and Andreas Bjelland cost £4.5m between them and the questionable signings – Philip Hofmann, Andy Gogia and Konstantin Kerschbaumer – cost around £750k.

The misbalance was addressed this season as the club focussed on picking up more home-grown players – signing the likes of Romain Sawyers, Daniel Bentley, John Egan and Rico Henry.

The club is now of the thinking

“We’ll sign who we want from where we want as long as the player fits and the price is right”.

And despite the looming separation from Europe, the club is still quite comfortable investing in a market which – quite frankly – could be (to coin a phrase) foreign to us in a few years time.

With the Scott Hogan deal firmly stalled at the moment (don’t believe what you read elsewhere. As of Tuesday 17th morning, our sources have told us the West Ham deal is going nowhere with The Hammers offering well below Brentford’s asking price), it looks like Hogan may be a Brentford player up to the end of the window or even beyond – with a few Premier League teams currently hovering .

If that is the case, we will have less money to play with in the short term. Doesn’t mean we don’t have cash. As we do. Money was set aside for this window DESPITE the Hogan windfall. It just means we don’t have as much cash.

And with Coventry and Norwich asking ‘silly money’ for Ben Stevenson and Sergi Canos, those deals looks dead in the water until both parties can agree a sensible fee.

So it is no surprise that we have decided to look back to Europe to add a bit of flair to our side as of late as in the past few years, that is where our flair players came from.

In the last few weeks, Spanish midfielder Jota returned from his sabbatical in Spain to add a well needed spark both on and off the pitch at Griffin Park.

And as mentioned before, the Bees have been looking to get wing wizard Sergi Canos back to Griffin Park. The young Spaniard ironically – having plied his trade in the Brentford team for a season – is now commanding an inflated UK-style fee. Something that may see the move stall.

Rather than be held to ransom, it makes sense that we are looking at our European Partners (not for much longer I dare say) for viable options to add to our side – to pull in the right sort of players within a reasonable budget. We would like to think the lessons of two seasons ago have been learned this time around – with the Bees getting the balance right and the player being able to adapt to the UK game quicker.

As for who are we looking for? We’ve been thrown a number of names by the various sources we have built up in Europe over the past few years.

One of our sources in Holland – who helped us enormously to exclusively break the – has come back to us with news that we are heavily linked with a player from a top flight Dutch team. Naturally we are unable to reveal the name and our sources at this time. But we’ve seen a video of the player in action the player and he sounds exactly like what we are looking for. Quick on the ball. Exciting. Happy to run at defenders. His match-day attire is pretty snazzy too it has to be said.

Whether the deal comes off or not, time will only tell in this mad mad window. But at least we have options.

So hat on folks and enjoy the ride. It’s an exciting time to be a Brentford fan.
And as we are continue to be linked with players from teams we could only dream of 3 seasons ago and hold our own in this division against the odds, being the eternal optimist that I am I would say at this moment time ……

 

…… the only way is up.

Billy Grant
@BillyTheBee