Dan Bennett for West London Sport....
It’s been another successful year for Brentford’s B team.
After losing out in the final of the Middlesex Senior Cup with a defeat against a strong Barnet team on penalties,
Neil MacFarlane’s side bounced back a week later in fitting circumstances – making amends for their previous penalty
woes by edging out Hendon in a shootout to lift the London Senior Cup.
It was the culmination of what has been another year of progression for a project first started back in 2016,
when the Bees announced they were to scrap their youth academy and instead focus exclusively on players in
the Under-23 age group.
The club had just lost Ian Poveda – now at Leeds – to Manchester City and Josh Bohui to Manchester United for next to nothing.
Current rules are skewed towards the bigger clubs, which are often able to sign academy prospects from other teams for
minimal compensation.
It means the likes of Brentford could spend years developing players who will end up providing no benefit whatsoever to the
club apart from a few thousand pounds’ worth of compensation. But the B team instead provides a change in direction to the
conventional academy set-up.
And with another crop of young talent coming through to make their first-team debuts this season, such as Nathan Young-Coombes
and Fin Stevens, Brentford are continuing to reap the rewards of that bold change in strategy eight years ago.
Robert Rowan’s inspiration
Much of the direction and leadership during the B team’s early days came from the club’s former technical director Robert Rowan,
who died in 2018 at the age of 28 after suffering a fatal cardiomyopathy episode.
One of those who now helps to oversee the B team is technical lead and assistant coach Allan Steele, who has been with the B team
since its formation and whose roles include arranging the games programme, the strategy, planning and organisation of the
team, and managing the loan players.
“The whole point of the B team is to try and transition them into the first team. That’s not just on the pitch, that’s off the pitch as well.”
First-team pathway
The narrowed focus of a B team as opposed to an all age-group academy means Brentford have been able to hone in
on those prospects who have not managed to make it at some of the bigger clubs. Players which might well have
been snapped up from teams like Brentford at an earlier age before being let go.
Defender Daniel Oyegoke, for example, joined in July last year after leaving Arsenal. Ben Hockenhull joined from
Manchester United in 2020, as did Max Haygarth a year later. Paris Maghoma was signed from Tottenham. The list goes on.
But there’s also an emphasis on other markets too. The club’s Danish connection is well known and first-team players
Mads Roerslev and Mads Bech Sorensen both came through the B team after arriving from FC Copenhagen and
AC Horsens respectively.
There’s also other European players like Jaakko Oksanen, who signed from HJK Helsinki in 2018, and Tristan Cram,a
who joined from French club Béziers, among others.
And as the B team has developed, it has become a more appealing prospect for in-demand youngsters.
Young-Coombes who made his first-team debut in the 3-0 win over Southampton, was signed from Scottish giants
Rangers last year. The forward has gone on to score more than 30 goals for the B team this season which,
to no surprise, has piqued the interest of other clubs.
Because Brentford B sit outside the Elite Player Performance Plan and Professional Development League system, it means they
are free to arrange their own fixtures against some of the best academies in the UK and the world as well as more senior
men’s teams to give the players a taste of the different challenges they may face in the future.
It is this, Steele says, which is the primary focus of having a B team. To provide the most effective pathway into the first team
that they possibly can.
“It’s really clear that the club want to promote players from within. You’ve seen the number of players that have not only
made debuts for the club but have been promoted permanently,” he said.
Chris Mepham, for example, was originally brought through Brentford’s B team setup after joining from Chelsea,
before he was sold to Bournemouth........