Keith Andrews was on the touchline looking and sounding very much the modern head coach. It was at QPR’s Loftus Road last Saturday afternoon and Andrews was speaking following Brentford’s preseason friendly victory over their west London neighbours.
“A good representation of where we are as a group,” Andrews said of a 1-0 win; “three-quarters of the way through preseason, 15 days away from Nottingham Forest.”
He praised the players’ athleticism and structure – “with and without the ball.” He praised the goalscorer, Nathan Collins. Collins had just been announced as Brentford’s new captain, one of Andrews’ first significant decisions as head coach. The two men have known each other, Andrews said, since he coached Collins at Irish under-age level. Andrews spoke of Collins’s “maturity and respect from his peers”. Brentford’s clean sheet, meanwhile, was kept by Caoimhín Kelleher.
Andrews’s reference to Forest came because Brentford’s season opens at the City Ground on Sunday week. The Bees won there 2-0 in May, so comparisons will be natural. This is the same Brentford of the past four Premier League seasons, only different. Suddenly it is a club with, if not an Irish spine, then important Irish vertebrae: Andrews-Kelleher-Collins. Manager-keeper-captain.
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Kevin O’Connor can be added to that. An Ireland under-21 international two decades ago, O’Connor made more than 500 appearances for Brentford and has club-legend status. He is one of four assistant coaches, all at the same level, under Andrews.
After seven years as head coach, and two before that as assistant, Thomas Frank has left for Tottenham. It’s a loss and Frank took three of Brentford’s trusted coaching staff with him. The club’s captain of the past two seasons, midfielder Christian Norgaard, has also departed for a north London club, Arsenal, and keeper Mark Flekken has joined Bayer Leverkusen; then Manchester United moved for the Bees’ signature player and top scorer last season, 20-goal Bryan Mbeumo.
With each departure, eyebrows rose and they will be at Ancelotti levels should Yoane Wissa exit as well.
Brentford finished 10th in the Premier League last season and are unquestionably one of the great sports-business football club success stories of the past decade. But physical change has an effect on perception and, to many, Brentford 2025 appear newly vulnerable rather than reliably solid. In appointing Andrews, 45 next month and in a frontline managerial role for the first time, this clever club looks to have inserted some risk into their succession strategy.
One-nil victories over QPR in preseason are hardly the stuff of audits, but those will start soon enough. Andrews’s suitability for such a high-profile and demanding post will be assessed from his first team sheet and opinion will be delivered fast and potentially furiously through a start to the league season interrupted by international breaks in September, October and November.
An unfortunate reality for Andrews, as with any number one, is the level of Premier League scrutiny internally as well as externally. Also unfortunate for Andrews is the likelihood that he was, if not the cheapest option, then close to it and that means Brentford can cut losses early without feeling they have committed too much money on this decision. Here is a club that believes in itself, in its methods, its structure – personnel come and go.
This may sound unnecessarily pessimistic, but it is professional football’s reality, or at least one of them. Another is that Brentford are as well-run or better-run than most clubs in Britain. Frank won only one of his first 10 matches in charge but Brentford retained faith. He lost a Championship play-off final against Fulham and Brentford retained faith. They had seen Frank day to day. They knew him and his work.
The same applies to Andrews, who joined the Bees as a set-piece coach last summer and made an impact via those fast-start first-minute goals. At his unveiling as head coach, Andrews was joined by Phil Giles, Brentford’s measured, experienced director of football who chipped in when the conversation turned to Andrews’s job interview. Neither club nor Andrews were “starting from scratch”, Giles said, adding, “he’s been interviewing for 12 months”.
Giles noted that “the staff like him and respect him”, which is no small matter. Familiarity has bred sufficient mutual contentedness for both Andrews and Brentford to first contemplate, then complete this deal. All the same, Andrews, who has been in the professional game since joining Wolves as a boy in the late 1990s, understands its hardness from the inside.
At that unveiling he said he had received “no assurances” regarding job security and his tone when speaking to in-house media may surprise those in football who have never accused Andrews of diffidence – “pretty humbled would be the overriding feeling”.
He also stressed his route to this point, including a playing career that was down as well as up – his first full Irish cap came at 28 – and the variety of experiences means he feels prepared. He started his B-Licence at Blackburn Rovers at 29, coaching their under-14s. There were stints as assistant at MK Dons and Sheffield United and of course with Stephen Kenny with Ireland. “A very deliberate path,” Andrews called it.
Managing Brentford could seem like a logical outcome therefore, but he knows it isn’t. “I’m very appreciative of the owner, the board and the staff that have supported this decision. It’s an opportunity I’m capable of doing, I’m ready; equally, I realise it is not the done thing in normal football clubs.
“But I don’t think we’re a normal football club.”
It isn’t, as the patience mentioned above demonstrates. Even last season Brentford conceded more goals at home than relegated Leicester, yet accumulated 56 points. Those tipping them for relegation next May must anticipate a collapse of 30 points and they’re omitting Kelleher’s arrival, plus other recruitment, something at which Brentford excel.
Even if the Bees’ trend of conceding chances continues – and Andrews’ desire is “we want to have an edge, play dynamic, relentless football” – then week-in, week-out Kelleher, at age 26, should prove what a talent he is.
For Collins the captaincy is also a moment – Andrews could have offered it to Jordan Henderson (35) inbound from Ajax. Instead it is Collins, recently turned 24. He played in all 38 league games last season. His early form with the armband will be monitored closely by Heimir Hallgrímsson and everyone else as Hungary’s visit to Dublin looms 29 days away.
Brentford’s form in general will be the subject of unusually high Irish attention. Questions previously unforeseen will be asked: can the returning-from-injury Igor Thiago, worth €34.5 million a year ago, replace Mbeumo’s goals? Will Andrews be a tracksuit, suit or knitwear manager?
The latter has been asked already. Andrews replied: “I’ll be me.”
