Brentford owner Matthew Benham on Smart Recruitment and the Future of Football Analytics: Running the Game 03/10/26

15:43Matthew Benham:Yes, I can, but I'd like to put a bit of a caveat before that. Because in 2015, when myself, Phil Giles, and Rasmus Angersen got really stuck into Brentford and really tried to make a lot of changes, we were maybe a bit caught up in our own hubris about, we've got all these new ideas, we're going to change the world, etc. And we actually sort of wrote up a blueprint or philosophy, you could say, and we actually called it Dogma 95 after the Danish film movement. You did? Yeah, we did.

16:20Rog Bennett:There's no better way to get ideas rejected in football than by saying Dogma 95 and the footballers would be like, what's that? It's a Danish innovative film theory.

16:29Matthew Benham:Yeah, yeah. But at the time, we were a bit sort of drunk on, oh, how we're going to change everything. And Phil Giles did say to me recently that he found this document and he said a lot of it was quite embarrassing about how we're going to be so different. We're going to disrupt everything.

16:52Matthew Benham:And really, we have introduced a few new things to an extent, but a lot of the success has just been in sort of running things you know efficiently sort of good management you know everyone being on the same page and and especially culture your idea of bringing in Lars von Trier as a technical director that one never found out well who knows who knows I want you to talk about

17:16Rog Bennett:leadership 2018 Thomas Frank you just mentioned him you bring in a young assistant he'd been a head coach in his domestic league in Norway. He seemed strikingly sane for football. That's how he always presented himself. He went on to lead Brentford into the Premier League and then two top half finishes in four years there. This summer, Frank left and you turn once again to an internal hire. Another assistant set piece coach Keith Andrews. He'd never been a head coach before. the English media normally very rational very calm they went berserk and they immediately determined Brentford be relegation favourites everyone I went back to look before we spoke had you 18th or 19th projected your club haven't missed a beat what are you looking for in a leader in your structure what traits do you interview for I mean I should first say about that the

18:10Matthew Benham:The appointment of Keith, I'm a big believer in the collective making decisions, not in a group think way. So I don't like the idea of, it's not sort of me saying, oh, I think we should go for Keith. Does everyone else agree? And they all say, so yes, boss, yes, boss. But it's more myself, Phil Giles, who's the director of football, Lee Dykes, the technical director and Ben Ryan, head of performance. The first thing we did, the four of us, we go away separately and think about who could be interesting and then we come together to talk. All four of us thought Keith seemed like a really, really strong candidate.

18:51Matthew Benham:He is clearly, as you've seen, an amazing communicator, fantastic leader. We knew that he was very good with the players and also with the existing staff. We realized we were in a bit of a high risk scenario anyway with all the sort of all the turnover of staff and players. So we could have bought in a sort of big name from outside who comes with an entourage that would have had a lot of risk in itself.

19:17Rog Bennett:Did you give that a second thought?

19:20Matthew Benham:We gave it a little bit of thought but not an enormous amount of thought. But it seemed to us it just seemed that Keith was like the clear logical candidate and maybe we're in a bubble because then when it got announced and there was all this uproar we're like hell what have we done but from where we were sitting from where we were sitting it just seemed that Keith was like a clear outstanding candidate when a player or a staff member leaves you know usually our first thought is is there someone you know internally who already knows the club who can come in.

19:55Rog Bennett:Knows your ways, knows your culture, knows the structure, knows their place ultimately. You told me you were not looking for an auteur. Essentially, you're running a major Hollywood film studio rather than the football club because you talked about, essentially, you don't want an auteur.

20:13Matthew Benham:Indeed. Actually, I said to Keith, I used the film director, Paul Thomas Anderson. I said, that's someone who I absolutely love and who's probably going to win the Oscar. But that's someone who's like an auteur, who's like the director, but also the producer and the screenwriter and will be heavily involved in the editing and the cinematography. And traditionally, an old style football manager was like that. You saw Fergie's and Cluffy's. You ran everything. Yeah, everything. Recruitment, medical department. Philosophy. Yeah, philosophy. You didn't have sports science in those days, but if you did, then Fergie or Cluffy would have run it.

20:50Matthew Benham:And for us, we talk about having a head coach, not a manager. And it was really important for us to have Keith as a fantastic leader, but also for the sort of technical director and head of performance to be able to have their input as well.

21:02Rog Bennett:Need to answer, Thomas Frank was so successful with you, seven seasons. I think he had a 43 % win percentage left for Tottenham Hotspur, traditional big six club. They're in the Champions League and he struggled. Lasted just 26 league games there. What does his success say with you and the struggles that he had there, say about context and leadership in football?

21:25Matthew Benham:Oh, that's a bit of a tricky question. I mean, I'm not entirely sure what's been going on internally at Tottenham, but I think potentially it was a really, really difficult job for anyone. Anyone could have come in and struggled. And it's not as if they've had like a huge bounce and improvement since he's left as well.

21:45Rog Bennett:It is about culture, like the right human being in the right culture and just...

21:50Matthew Benham:Yeah, I think so. I mean, it appears from the outside that maybe there are sort of cultural issues inside Tottenham, but yeah, I could be wrong.

21:59Rog Bennett:I mean, Keith Andrews is rare. We don't have many set pieces who make the jump to being head coach, but you found immediately set pieces were a part of football that were woefully unexplored. I think 30 % of goals come from there, but footballers didn't train. Football teams rarely train them. And I know you became really, immediately, really obsessed, really involved, you broke it down. Can you talk about, I mean, Brentford, that was an amazing moment. I think you got three goals straight from kickoff within 50 seconds in 2024, almost set plays that put the ball into a danger zone that you identified.

22:32Rog Bennett:What data are you using? What vulnerabilities did you uncover?

22:37Matthew Benham:Well, first of all, that's a bit of a sore point you've just uncovered because they are on a set piece bonus, which drives them quite a lot. And they They did say the three goals straight from kickoff, they are set pieces. We had a bit of a debate about whether they qualify as set pieces. That's why they stopped. Yeah, I guess so. We did have to pay out the bonus. And I should say, Keith, last year was our set piece coach. He wouldn't want to be identified as a set piece coach. He saw himself as an all-round coach. He made it clear that when he spent last season with us as a set-piece coach, that wasn't his ultimate calling.

23:27Matthew Benham:But he wanted to find a way to join the club and that was what was available at the time. But I think he's not like Gianni Vio. He wouldn't see himself as a specialist set-piece coach.

23:39Rog Bennett:What did he lead you to see in terms of the vault? Let's talk about corners specifically. then because it is a game state that Brentford were one of the first clubs to take really seriously. You built a lot of set plays, very much like an NFL playbook. And other clubs are catching up. We're looking at Arsenal leading the league with perhaps one of the most ruthless set of corner routines that the Premier League's seen. Can you talk about how you understood that moment in football, the corner, the data that you used that built your approach? because Brentford initially, you'd either go short or you'd drop it in right around the penalty area.

24:14Rog Bennett:What were you seeing? What was the numbers? What were you thinking?

24:16Matthew Benham:Sure. And obviously, Arsenal have got their set-piece coaches, Nicolas Jovaire, who was with us previously. Quite a lot of people have worked for us as set-piece coaches and then gone off to bigger clubs. It wasn't so much driven by any stats. It was more, I'd always been a big NFL fan and I realised that... Who's your team? Jets. Yeah.

24:39Rog Bennett:the Everton of the NFL yeah are they that bad yeah yeah go on you've been in at least Everton

24:49Matthew Benham:have won stuff

24:50Rog Bennett:yeah the Everton are the Chicago Bears we won in the same year and I don't know where my sadness ends with one and begins with the other but what NFL you're looking at the Jets you're thinking about set pieces

25:00Matthew Benham:yeah or probably looking at better teams than the Jets but just but whenever I'd raised it in football and said you know why can't I have a play playbook and have signals and things like that, it was always, oh no, that's way too complicated. And I say, well, you get players who barely have a high school education, but they can still memorise a 100-page playbook in the NFL. And it seemed that the main resistance to set pieces was that players don't like it, players don't like boring training. Traditionally in English football, players absolutely love someone like Kevin Keegan because training is just fun.

25:39Matthew Benham:It's five-a-side and head tennis. It's just fun. There's no boring learning or repetition or slow walkthroughs. And the thing about if you're going to be good at set pieces or tactical play for that matter, there is quite a lot of boring stuff, rote learning, repetition, slow walkthroughs. And a lot of teams weren't doing it just because players didn't like that. They wouldn't stand for it. Yeah, and traditionally, if the players didn't like it and the manager tried to push it, then the manager might lose the dressing room, as they say. Yeah, that was really why we tried to push. And for whatever reason, it worked a lot better in Michelin.

26:24Matthew Benham:It sort of clicked into place really quickly.

26:26Rog Bennett:But it wasn't data. It was essentially just the mindset of the player being willing to go to the levels.

26:32Matthew Benham:Yeah. And obviously, yeah, I mean, what would you rather do? have a fun five-a-side kickabout or sort of you know so that's really the english mindset the

26:40Rog Bennett:english culture that you inherited this i i interviewed a a player in the premier league in the last year who's known for incredible corners and i i said to him you know is it like nfl like you call plays you have this he's like it's not really that complicated i just i just hit it into dangerous area um i think he was underplaying it a bit i thought he was under I believe I found out he was not underplaying it. Are you underplaying it?

27:07Matthew Benham:No, I'm not underplaying it. No, but I think their routines are quite choreographed, as are ours, as are a lot of clubs now these days.

27:23Rog Bennett:So you build this structure, you build this culture, you're propelling Brentford up the football pyramid. You do this while you are turning profit on transfers in the most intelligent way. I mean, it's like hit after hit, success after success. Goalkeeper David Royer bought for four million, safeguarded the road to the Premier League, eventually sold to Arsenal four years later. Football scouting, recruitment, that's another area that's kind of like a backwater. There's a lot of consensus, there's a lot of old wisdom. Resist innovation to a large degree. What inefficiencies were you looking at?

27:58Rog Bennett:what underscouted markets to really uncover and drive this growth?

28:02Matthew Benham:Yeah, well, Raya is a good example because I come back to this thing about the collective because for me that's so important. The fact that everyone goes away, looks at it independently, and then comes back and then we have a sort of free open exchange of views. I like to use the phrase exchange of views rather than a debate because when you're debating someone it's all about winning and not backing down and sort of you know you know not losing face whereas a free exchange of views that's more about you know you know can we get to the sort of a right answer or sort of a less wrong answer um so rare yeah we all go away um and i personally sort of came back and i was like no we shouldn't sign this guy and obviously now i'd say he's potentially the best keeper in the world but um at the time um i was fixated about having a keeper who could absolutely dominate, like aerially dominate, because we were pretty weak on crosses.

28:59Matthew Benham:And the person who was pushing that most of all was our goalkeeping coach at the time, Iñaki Kanya, who's now at Arsenal. And he was like adamant about Raya, who was at Blackburn at the time, I think in League One. He was absolutely adamant, yeah, this is going to be a world-class keeper.

29:14Rog Bennett:So what data are you using? What underserved markets? Is it about underserved markets? Or do you just have a different analytic?

29:21Matthew Benham:For keepers, data is pretty tricky. For keepers, it's much more about old-style scouting, whereas outfield players, it's a combination of old-style scouting and the data. In terms of what data is important, well, am I going to tell you?

29:40Rog Bennett:No one's listening.

29:41Matthew Benham:Okay.

29:45Matthew Benham:I'll tell you after. For a striker, for example, receiving, getting in position is way, way more informative than finishing. There's an awful amount of randomness in actual finishing. So for example, if you show me two players at a similar level and they both scored 15 goals last season, but one of them had twice the number of chances, I want the guy who's had twice the number of chances. Even though you might say, oh, but he was more efficient, he was less efficient. The fact that he was getting in position for the shot, that's really important for us.

30:27Rog Bennett:I'm going to have to introduce you to the work of Beto. Well, yeah.

30:31Matthew Benham:So basically, if you're... I love that man. So I think when we played Everton at our place late last year, Beto missed three one-on-ones,

30:41Rog Bennett:wouldn't he? And you thought that's our future guy?

30:45Matthew Benham:Any decent model worth its salt would give Beto an upgrade. Any player who manages to make three one-on-ones in a single game, even if he actually happens to miss them, and typically a one-on-one you're like 50-50 to score, the fact that he's got three one-on-ones, he's got to get an upgrade on any decent model. The man in the street would slate him, but actually receiving is more important than finishing. It is.

31:12Rog Bennett:I mean, this is a man who, I mean, for strikers, it's been such an incredible part of your story because the Brentford striking lineage in a game in which striking, being able to score goals is, I mean, it is the difference between average teams and doom teams, really, in the Premier League. I mean, you have an almost biblical lineage of unearthing strikers. This list is insane. Neil Mopay, the great **** housing king, he was once an incredible striker. You brought him for$2 million, 25 goals in the championship season. You sold him for$26 million. Ollie Watkins,$2.3 million, 25 goals. Sold to Villa for$37 million.

31:53Rog Bennett:Ivan Toney, this is like biblical. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Ivan Toney. It is. 20 goals in the Premier League. Sold for$40 million, more than he cost last season. I mean, this is insane. You sold Johan Wieser and Brian Mbumo for a combined$160 million. In stepped Igor Thiago, who'd come in before, overcame injury, arrived for 35 million. He's already scored 18 goals this season, second just early in Haaland in the Premier League. It really is about positional. There's not a data point you have about finishing efficiency, decision-making that you're proving. Because you're going to tell me this is luck that you keep doing this.

32:31Rog Bennett:But this is alchemy or there's a genius that you can give us a little bit of light on now.

32:39Matthew Benham:So if I go through them, some of them are more scouting based and some are more maths based. So someone like Thiago, the scouts and the models, everything lined up. Ivan Tony, scouts and models, yeah. Whereas players like Umbermo and Mope, the models were not that keen on them, but the scouts were so keen.

33:00Rog Bennett:Tell me about Umbermo.

33:02Matthew Benham:I think our models aren't great for young players because we don't have data from you know so it's not like u.s sport where you have data from high school and college so you know brian was like 19 playing in the french second division um so the model was like nah nah not not so keen on him but the fact that the fact that the scouts and especially uh lee dykes our technical director was so positive that that sort of you know that sort outweighed the model being sort of so-so on him whereas if you've got a player who's like mid-20s and he's played um you know a couple of hundred games then the model better like him or we're not going to sign him but if he's like yeah 19 we know the model's not going to be that that informative is there a move you didn't make that you regret um yeah i mean there's always going to be ones uh that you regret um i mean i was saying before we we could have signed as a for four million quid i I think in 2019, we could have signed Marmouche on a free about three years ago.

34:07Rog Bennett:You were watching the FA Cup final. Yeah, yeah. One scored, the other didn't. You could have had them both.

34:12Matthew Benham:Yeah, for four million quid combined, but we didn't. The summer that we got promoted to the Premier League, there's actually two players who scouted amazingly, amazingly well. One was Mudrick, which would have been maybe a bit complicated if we signed him. although we were very close to signing him for quite a low fee for i think for 20 million euros and he eventually went i think for more like 80 million euros although he's now he's currently serving a drug ban and then um michael alise his scouting was like unbelievable just uh out of this world but we just got promoted um we weren't used to um the crazy agent fees um uh in the Premier League at the time and the agent fee for that one was just so insanely high that we stepped away even though there was part of us thinking well if you combine the transfer fee and the agent fee it's kind of not too bad but the agent fee on its own was just so insane that we stepped away but there's always going to be ones you miss out on.

35:18Rog Bennett:Football right now we're talking about this backstage has been reduced to jewels, royal rumbles in the penalty area around corners, herculean throws, which are feats of strength. There's no doubt data is driving a lot of these changes. It's made football smarter. Football still lags. MLB, NBA, football still waiting so much to do. Football has become smarter because of data. Has it made it better?

35:43Matthew Benham:Yeah, I personally think so. I know there's all these people who say, oh, it's better in my day, etc. But there's been a lot of articles recently about how the Premier League is sterile. You actually get goals per game. It's a lot higher than it was like 20, 30 years ago. And personally, I think it's a better watch. I think people can just be nostalgic about the past.

36:10Rog Bennett:So it is the game. What do you enjoy about football? What makes you, what football makes you happiest to watch? Or are you just seeing numbers?

36:28Matthew Benham:I actually like it personally for me when there's not something on the line so much because yeah being a club owner there's quite a lot of stress and you know I was speaking to our mutual friend Steve Parrish from Crystal Palace before the Euro final in 2024 and we were both looking forward to that because we're like little boys. You wake up in the morning really looking forward to it, really hoping England win, but basically looking forward to it. Whereas as club owners, if we've got a big game, you just wake up with dread. When we've had playoff finals, yeah, you just wake up with dread. You don't wake up thinking, God, it's going to be a great day, I hope we win.

37:13Matthew Benham:It's more like, I can't wait to get this game out of the way. Why do you do it? Yeah. After the game's out of the way and you've won, then it feels pretty good. In terms of watching for pure enjoyment, that would be watching internationals or other games. But when it's watching Brentford, enjoyment is a bit of a stretch to say, I enjoy it while the games are going on. I mean, maybe when we're sort of three or four nil up and there's like a couple of minutes left.

37:51Rog Bennett:Come on, playing Everton is what you enjoy, is what you're hinting at.

37:58Rog Bennett:In 15 years, you put about$130 million into the club. Chelsea in that time have spent$4 billion with a B. They did take Mudrick eventually. I mean, it's just a different echelon of scale that you're working off. Data is now prevalent in every club. Every club has a stats department. Every club has a set-piece coach, proprietary research firm. After this interview, when they all watch it, they'll all have a philosophy coach, which are just probably my greatest contributions of football. How do you keep evolving when the data edge has always been copycatted and eroded?

38:30Matthew Benham:Yeah, it's a good question. I think just having everyone super, super open-minded. There's always a danger in football, and I've seen it so many times when you'll have people who'll be super open-minded until they get some success and praise and then it's right, this is my way, take it or leave it, I'm not going to change. I think you just have to always accept that everything you're doing is inefficient and your approach should be, we're never going to be perfect, we just try and be a little bit less imperfect every day and it's really about everyone having that mindset, constantly about how can we improve?

39:10Matthew Benham:What can we be doing better?

39:12Rog Bennett:What does Brentford need next step? Is there a next step for Brentford? Is there a ceiling at which point you say you know that this is our level? Or do you not believe in our level?

39:30Matthew Benham:Yeah, I'm not sure if there's a fixed hard ceiling. we just want to keep improving I mean obviously our big weakness is the commercial side especially in terms of brand awareness recognition our stadium is very small so it's very important for us to try and grow our supporter base outside England so I think that's the big next step for us

39:59Rog Bennett:So you've done what you can with the TV money you've done what you can with the inefficiencies in the market the next phase for the club is is the commercial and almost the global brandification of yeah i think so yeah i mean

40:13Matthew Benham:i wouldn't say we're done with inefficiencies because there's still got to be other inefficiencies out there but just probably not as big ones as there were like 10 years ago so when you do look

40:24Rog Bennett:forward 10 years matthew what is the next frontier what's the next part of the game how will we look back now and say I can't believe they didn't have that data point?

40:35Matthew Benham:Well, I could imagine that models and AI models will get better and better and therefore they'll get more and more prevalent. So even though a lot of people think our recruitment is 99 % model driven, it's not. The model has an input, but there's still a huge human input as well. But I I would presume as models do get better, the human input will be less and less. The possibly sort of interesting slash controversial one would be in terms of coach decisions, in terms of lineups, strategy, when to make subs, when to change the formation. At the moment, that's barely model driven whatsoever, but I'm sure gradually it'll be sort of more and more so.

41:25Matthew Benham:I mean there's sort of something similar in NFL you know for many many years you know all the geeks were saying you should be more aggressive on fourth down you know all these all the coaches are sort of too conservative and now now these days you watch an NFL game and there'll be a sort of graphic saying you know the model says here you should go for it and and so I think it's it's now more commonplace when making decisions on fourth downs that coaches are sort of informed to a greater or lesser extent by models. And I presume that will gradually happen more and more in soccer.

42:01Rog Bennett:So you can see a future in which the model will be clear, the manager didn't make the substitution, and so the manager will be speaking to the owner about the model said this, you didn't make this decision.

42:13Matthew Benham:Possibly at some point in the future. And it'll be a gradual thing. So I'm not saying that in five years' time, I expect all the head coaches to be slavishly following what the model says. But there could come a point where the model says very, very strongly, play player A and not player B. And if the manager does play player B, that someone, not me, but someone will be saying to the manager, can you take me through your thinking?

42:43Rog Bennett:You'd just be hiring managers for press conferences. What the future of manager is just being charismatic in the press conference?

42:51Matthew Benham:No, I think the head coach will still have a really, really strong role, but possibly he'll be working more in conjunction with technology and less just based on his intuition.

43:05Rog Bennett:I cannot wait for that future. By God, I've told you, the models I think is what I'd like to have as the next US Men's National Team Manager. But I do want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. It's been incredible watching you. It's been incredible watching this Brentford story. You do give hope to, I think, all fans of all teams, Matthew. Not you, New York Jets fans. Let's hear it from Matthew Bennett.