Recruiting through data science.

I love sport, and cannot help but get engrossed in the Brentford Football Club success story. The west London club have gained promotion to the Premier League for the first time since 1947, and it makes me ask what we can learn from their unstoppable team momentum.

The secret to that success appears to be a recruitment and transfer strategy that uses data and statistical analytics. This was introduced by the club's owner, Matthew Benham, and was not the first time he had used the system. The former Oxford graduate implemented something similar when he joined Danish side FC Midtjylland in 2014. That club then won the Danish Superliga 2014-15, 2017-18, 2019-20, and were runners-up in 2018-19 and 2020-21. Prior to Benham's influence, the best FC Midtjylland had achieved were as runners-up in 2007-08.

The philosophy that Benham uses is to look at potential, and not actual performance.?This means searching for players that do the right things, but do not always deliver. For example, traditional thinking would judge attacking players by goals, but Benham gives more weight to the build up to the successful outcome so looks at the runs, dribbles, and passes. With defenders, rather than just clean sheets, he judges on the chances they provide opposition attackers. Lastly, the goalkeeper is examined through their shot-stopping and by the areas where they concede goals (an aspect that can be controlled by a defensive line).

This has caused Brentford to look in places that other such clubs simply don't bother, like the second division in France or lower divisions in Denmark. There is also an interesting profile in terms of age range. The club's investment in younger players of a lower value has resulted in the average age of signing being below 23, only four of the regular starters being over 27 years old, with a single player over the age of 30. This approach brings several benefits, one of which facilitate an attacking style that forces the older players to perform.

The returns on this strategy are impressive. Players like Watkins and Benrahma, both cost a million euros each, have now gained future respective values of 12 and 10.5 million?euros. By diversifying away from ticket reliance and into the transfer market, the club was able to weather the pandemic far better than most. Brentford’s revenue for the year end of the 2020 season was ￡13.9 million, and is now chasing a minimum of ￡297 million over the next five years if the team survives the current Premiership season.?This means that a club that many had not heard of only 15 years ago, is now competing for one of the biggest prizes in sport.

So, what can Benham teach us in terms of recruitment? We could be confident that he would look beyond the immediate professional, and explore the potential of the individual. There would be less importance given to a specific pedigree, and more consideration of a varied multi-discipline background. Benham would certainly look beyond the 'usual' universities, and include lesser academic institutions and vocational avenues. He would also get the final product he wanted by developing an employee internally, rather than hiring a more 'finished' professional from another organisation. Finally, he would tell us if we want to successfully disrupt, then we have to stop doing what we've always done, and step outside the status quo.