Brentford Bees Forum With Manager and Sporting Directors
An excellent forum was held where all questions were answered as best as reasonably they could. The only difficult moment was a late question again about Mark Warburton and his departure. The fans were given good updates on all aspects of the club. These were maybe the main points:
- Promotion to Premier League within 3 years. This is Plan A. There is no Plan B
- The new ground should be ready, just, for start of 2018-19 season
- Signing a couple of players on loan has not been ruled out to cover injuries
- We need to remember than until we move ground we are limited by the small turnover in comparison to other Championship clubs. Last season Brentford turned over 8 m £ in comparison to a Championship average of 17m £
- Although signing many EU players, players in the Football League are on our radar even down to Conference level
- Football league rules do not allow differential pricing of games for away fans. The example cited of Leeds charging £24 for a junior away ticket for example could not replicated at Griffin Park
- The squad is stronger than last season.
In attendance answering questions were
- Mark Devlin
- Cliff Crown
- Marinus Dijkhuizen
- Rasmus Ankersen
- Phil Giles
- Peter Gilham
As a small bit of background Rasmus ankersen and Phil Giles are the co-directors of football at Brentford, Cliff Crown the chairman, Mark Devlin CEO and Marinus Dijkhuizen the manager.
- Phil Giles worked at Smartodds – a company owned by Matthew Benham which provides statistical sports modelling services – for eight years and had been their Head of Quantitative Sports Research since 2010
- Rasmus Ankersen was Chairman of FC Midtjylland the Danish Superliga team owned by Matthew Benham and author of a book ” The Goldmine Effect”.