Brentford at the Break
a low-ceiling, high-floor approach focused on dead balls
We are going to make reports over hopefully all 20 Premier League teams leading up to the return of the best league in the world on Boxing Day. Get everyone all educated, it helps me to do these to understand what teams do and what their players do, hope it does for you also.
Tale of the Tape
A team that relies on making their danger touches more valuable than the opponents.
Shot quality gap and conversion of deep completions to xG gap really noticeable here as they try to overcome the large shot gap.
Field Maps
A map combining shot production with progression efficiency vs the average PL team.
They don’t progress the ball smoothly anywhere on the pitch. How do they actually generte offense? Through dead balls. Nobody has more shot creating actions from dead balls than Brentford’s 40. Only Forest and Bournemouth have fewer live ball passes that create shots, their open play attack really is as bad as it looks above.
The Brentford danger zone completion% allowed was below average, as you can see by the green 45% above, danger zone in my calculations extends a bit past the box which you can starkly see here. Brentford focus on stopping those box completions, and give you all you want in Zone 14 or right in front of the box.
Pass Clusters
Long, aggressive low % balls mixed with a bit of box buildup. This vertical brown cluster down the left side is played an absurd 3 standard deviations above an average team: the 54 times they have attempted it are 11 more than 2nd place Spurs. Mathias Jensen (19) and Ben Mee (11) are the most common guys who play this ball that they complete ~35% of the time.
They do not target the central midfield much, I’ve watched several Brentford games and several times I’ve gotten 20-30 minutes in before I really understand who is even playing central mid. Part of it is the jerseys that make numbers impossible to identify, come on Brentford clean it up for your TV fans.
The Brentford defense is sort of a funnel to zone 14, which can’t be by design right? I know Brentford and Brighton were always lumped together as the “smart teams” but it certainly seems like Brighton has left them in the dust. Stuff like this is hard to believe is the result of some sort of design.
Bretnford are one of the more unique defenses in a way in that the types of passes they allow differ from the average more than all but Man City. Brentford essentially never have opponents play around at the back against them, they do press high (see that green .148) and don’t allow opponents tons of time with the ball. Then they sort of retreat and concede Zone 14. Last year Brentford almost ned shots (lowest rate i the league, fewer in total than all but Chelsea/City/Liverpool). This year they are 1 off the most blocked shots.
Brentford actually wrangle more shots out of those long balls from Raya to Toney than the average team does, giving them at least some reason to keep doing it.
Defensively, they are vulnerable to long balls down the sides and opponents setting up in the midfield.
Attackers
Toney is absolutely crucial to the Brentford attack, getting involved in over 7 duels per 90 while leading the team in receiving, xG and buildup contributions. Even with how many of his touches are aerial duels, the team gets shots off 26% of the time within 12 seconds of his touch, a rate right up there with Wissa for best on the team.
Wissa is sort of a Vardy-esque striker in a way, not involving himself in buildup play or as a receiving outlet outside of being ready to get his shot off. His just ok xG makes him a hard name to put in pen on the team sheet. He does get involved defensively a decent bit at least.
Mbeumo has been in pen. I guess it’s to give the team another reasonable ball progressor up top.
Lewis-Potter has many intriguing attributes, great ball-carrier for one and a very promising receiving outlet for another, but loses tons of his take-ons and has been the least dangerous at involving himself in team shots of all the attackers. He’s losing the ball a ton and not working to win it back much, still very much a prospect rather than someone impacting Premier League games consistently.
Midfield
That midfield, where Brentford do not really like to go. There are a lot of incomplete players here without many top-end traits.
You have a player like Josh da Silva (basically an auxiliary attacker) who can progress the ball and get the tempo moving toward a shot but lacks the ability to be heavily involved in the attack himself, and does negligible defensive work.
You’ve got rock solid Vitaly Janelt, grinding away defensively, rarely losing the ball, but slowing the team down a ton with the ball and never finding space to receive the ball.
Frank Onyeka almost never even has the ball, and the team progresses well over the next 10 seconds just 12% of the time he touches the ball, an abominable number for a midfielder: no Premier League player in this area of the pitch has a lower rate.
Shandon Baptiste is probably the one with the most complete statistical resume on the spreadsheet so far, which makes me wonder why he has just 447 minutes. A Silva-like receiving rate, Jensen-like xA numbers, and near Janelt efficiency numbers. The only thing lacking really is the attacking spark, the team rarely puts up a shot after his touches.
Jensen’s a lot like Baptiste but with a much higher ball loss rate and that true spark, 14% of the time Brentford get a shot within 12 seconds of his touch vs 7% for Baptiste.
This is a midfield crying out for a return to form by Norgaard.
The wide players need a big time upgrade, they do not contribute to the Brentford attack: Aaron Hickey has .01 xg + xa per 90 and sub 2 shot buildup involvements, he has basically been where attacks go to die. And he probably has a better offensive profile than Mads Roerslev.
Rico Henry is closer to average with the ball, not quite there, but closer. But he lacks the duel-winning and takeaway ability of Hickey. This area of the pitch maybe has 1-1.5 PL quality players in Jensen/Janelt and a possible one in Baptiste. Norgaard will be watched closely.
Defenders
Ajer has played a ton of fullback so his numbers should be, and are a bit different. Mathias Jorgensen also being called Zanka always does my head in, took a year for that to settle in. How does he get away with that?
Their defenders win duels (except for Zanka/Jorgensen) , that is clearly what they prioritize at the back.
Goalie
Heavily involved in Brentford’s attack, Raya is constantly blasting long balls forward leading to lots of fields gained. Only Gavin Bazunu at Saints has launched more long passes so far.
Raya is 18th/26 in post shot xG saved with -1.6.
Raya is aggressive against crosses (3rd in league in claim%) and aggressive leaving his box (7th/26 in outside box actions per 90).
Passing Combos
Most Progression
Most Shot Buildups
The Rundown
Brentford are a bit of a unique team, mainly due to their defense. They press you and don’t give you easy buildup but then fall back and let you roam around in front of the box and fire lots of shots, but they are for now keeping those shots at low quality.
Offensively, they do not have a good profile of midfielder or fullback to attack with so rely on launching the ball upfield and winning dead balls to try and score from. It’s not a very pretty approach and not one that seems to scale much higher than mid-table. Right now they are not executing pretty well at grinding that xG above their other metrics but there is certainly the danger of falling to their danger touches/progression numbers down dangerously close to relegation.
Norgaard will return but Brentford maybe just don’t have the aims for trying anything risky, they are happy playing this type of game and not being relegated for a while and building up some cash. Doing that while slowly bringing in a new profile of player (Lewis-Potter clearly one of those types) is a pretty smart plan.
Rest of the season
The bookies say they are just under 30% to make the top 10 and just under 10% to get relegated. That feels a good bit high for a top 10 finish, this team does not have a high ceiling. But the floor remains solid enough I won’t be pushing in relegation bets on the Bees.