Ahead of the 2021/22 season Felix Pate joined David Anderson on the Bees Tactical Podcast to help run the rule over the Brentford FC engine room.
On the pitch, playing the position of “midfield” can mean many things and it’s where you find the broadest array of players. Full-Backs tend to fit neatly into a similar bucket of characteristics, Centre-Backs, too, are becoming familiar at the top end of the game. Strikers are all meant to be tall, fast and strong enough to press, and out and out wingers must be quick, direct with qualities 1v1 . Midfielders, however, they’re the bunch that cover the longest list of roles and come in all different shapes and sizes.
Screeners, ball players, ball winners, interceptors, attacking midfielders, dribblers, goal scorers, late arrival into the box-ers. And that’s before we address or think about midfielders as disruptors, extra defenders, and out and out shit-housers. It’s this broad contribution to vital parts that makes midfield the most interesting position to play on the pitch.
Since the 4-2-3-1 tactical revolution, we’ve begun to see more and more midfield specialists, operating as defensive pivots, disciplined and strong on the off the ball side of the game and comfortable short passers, shifting play on to more “expansive” or “better” players.
Opposite to this, our advanced attacking midfielders are concentrating a greater amount of their efforts towards attacking or final third output.
As Brentford are about to commence their first ever season in the Premier League, does it pay to have a roster of generalists in a world of midfield specialists?
Using LGOP’s PAREJO model, (Pate’s Adjusted Rating using Elo for Judging Outputs, for it’s given name) we can profile players by how much of their output is apportioned by percentage into four key bins. Attacking, Creating, Pressing and Defending.
With this type of modelling you gain the ability to do a top down assessment on whether the most important part of the pitch is too heavily skewed in one direction, say, defensive shufflers heavily favoured over creative ball players.
Christian Nørgaard (27) is a nice place to start our review of Brentford FC Midfielders due to his almost perfectly rounded profile. Making it all the way to the Euro 2020 semi-finals before crashing out in extra-time to England, he performed an international midfield support role to Hojbjerg and Dortmund's Thomas Delany, profiling similarly to the Tottenham Hotspur midfielder.
Nørgaard’s balanced profile is symptomatic of his all round game on the pitch. Able to break up play and distribute the ball, he shows a large amount of defensive tactical awareness which he combines with a more than competent ball progressing ability. LGOP’s 2021 projection is hot on a midfielder entering his peak years and his rating considers him good enough to play at Premier League standard and potentially even outperform current expectations.
Mathias Jensen is Nørgaard’s midfield partner at club level as well as on the international stage and the two compliment each other well. Also featuring in a Euro 2020 semi-final, Jensen played more minutes than any other Brentford midfielder in the promotion winning 20/21 season. With more of a weighting towards creating and attacking when compared to with the profile of his fellow countrymen, Jensen’s game is based around receiving the ball from deeper players and forging a constant supply line to forwards or players in the final third.
Set-pieces, balls into the box and plenty of shot creating actions, Jensen is a positional master who controls the outcomes of games through his creative passing. It’s no coincidence, then, that the 25 year old Dane signed off the back of a difficult period in Celta Vigo shows a profile likeness to Southampton’s set-piece specialist, James Ward-Prowse, and Liverpool's evergreen swiss-army knife, James Milner. Hard work off the ball gives them the time to cause damage on it.
Vitaly Janelt was signed form Bundesliga 2s VfL Bochum in 2020 and due to an almost season ending injury to Christopher Nørgaard, he was thrown into the Brentford first team and the Championship midfield lions den. It was really sink or swim for Vitaly and fortunately, (or not) the left-footed German u21 defensive midfielder dominated the off ball side of the game.
Slightly behind his Danish compatriots in the passing department, Janelt is absolutely no slouch in possession and is arguably the greater individual goal threat with his long range ball shooting ability. Showing up with a similar skill-set and ability to Nathanial Chalobal and Marko Grujic, the fact that these players are yet to show us enough evidence they can be Premier League mainstays is caveated by Janelt himself still yet to fully reach his maximum LGOP level. Janelt is a fascinating career watch due to the fact the eye test is currently far more convincing than the data. Don’t sleep on this one.
Josh Dasilva is an outstanding box-box midfielder, unsurprisingly, showing up as another all round star with a slight leaning towards increasing on-ball value for his team. Which all makes sense right? Anyone who’s watched Dasilva at length will have witnessed him either slaloming penetratively into the half-spaces or making space for himself on the edge of the box to curl away a dangerous shot into the corners.
Drastically improving his off the ball work over the last two seasons and with the biggest goal threat outside of Brentford’s Forwards and Wingers, a large chunk of the promotion season on the sidelines is hampering what is sure to be a career that smashes through all of his expected numbers. Injury has ruled him to out for the start of Brentford’s first top flight season in almost 75 years, but with profile matches to that of Billy Gilmour, Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Everton stalwart Leon Osman, he’s a truly dynamic midfielder who alongside Ethan Pinnock is a player with the type of tools which could genuinely be genuinely coveted by a top 6 Premier League side. See you on the pitch soon, Josh.
Mads Bidstrup returned from a lengthy injury lay-off at the back end of Brentford’s promotion campaign and racked up decent minutes as the season began to wind down.
Signing from RB Leipzig u19s, a great deal of maturity and tactical awareness arrives with the young player. Balanced across all four LGOP factors, we’re yet to see a preference emerge from his limited numbers to date. When Bidstrup does get on the pitch he performs well and his profile likeness is to that of Scott McTominay, Teun Koopmeiners and Bryan Cristante. No pressure, Mads.
Saman Ghoddos is predictably showing up as favourable towards the creative and attacking areas. Boasting a career playing in almost all of the forward attacking positions, a more withdrawn role at Brentford demands him in the earlier phases of play and to join in on attacks later on. Able to strike the ball well off both feet and with experience in European cup club competitions under his belt, Ghoddos scores highest for career “Team Reliance” compared with the other midfielders. Into his peak years, the player will be desperate to push on as an “midfield 8” after contributing close to 1500 minutes for Brentford last season.
Shandon Baptiste is another unfortunate player to miss most of the 2020/21 season through injury. The former Oxford United dynamo was part of a double signing with Tarique Fosu-Henry and shows a to date preference in his profile for the creative, attacking and passing side of the game. Not to let his energy, goal threat and penetrative flair mask his ability in the defensive areas, Baptiste’s LGOP projected ratings are taking a hit due to how much football he has missed in the last 12-18 months. If he can get back on the right side of physical holdups and play regularly after a succession of serious injuries, Brentford could have another well rounded weapon on their hands as the club push to stay in the top league.
We’re being a tad cheeky here by listing Frank Onyeka before his move is official but we simply couldn’t help ourselves. The 23 year old Nigerian is a pressing and ball destroying monster who is highly skilled in possession, too. Onyeka’s profile sways towards the defensive and pressing end of the spectrum mainly due to his strong ball winning and foul drawing ability. Fitting the mould of Brentford FC increasingly looking to recruit players with more rounded profiles, tactically, Onyeka is a coach's dream whereas athletically and physically, he is an opponent's worst nightmare.
He has a high ceiling already competing well at Champions and Europa League level and with two Superliga titles under his belt and narrowly missing out on a third by a point on the final day of last season, he has been an important player in one of, if not, the strongest team in Denmark.
Coming to Brentford from the other club in Matthew Benham’s stable we already know how much this player will have impressed the group's scouts and analysts. With a standout level of consistency and the highest projected peak of all the midfielders on the books, Frank Onyeka might add that extra bit of lacking dependability that prevented Brentford from being promoted out of the Championship sooner. We can't wait to see a player rival Premier League clubs would have no doubt been interested in on the pitch in the red and white of Brentford.
In summary, Brentford midfielder talent has been strategically pieced together across the last three seasons with versatility and improvement in mind. Covering off as many of the duties expected to be undertaken by midfielders in 2021, the standard deviation of the group (a way to measure how much a data set strays away from it’s average) is slightly below average league level, indicating a tighter squad rating focussed on keeping weaknesses to a minimum.
In a game of weak-links it appears the youthful generalists are going to provide a special age-curved shot at survival in the Premier League.