Brentford Director of Football, Phil Giles believes that the summer transfer business was about “long-term health of the club.”
Brentford signed Igor Thiago, Fabio Carvalho, Sepp van den Berg, Gustavo Nunes and Jayden Meghoma – all aged 23 or under, with Giles happy to have a “good,” squad who can develop in coming seasons rather than spend in each transfer window.
“We’ve invested in young players, now it’s about giving them an opportunity to step forward to develop.
“It’s quite a young squad now with Jayden, Gustavo and Fábio – I could name a few.
“So, it’s not all about going out and buying a load more players in January or next summer. How do we develop these players and how can they take us to the next level?”
Giles proceeded to explain the rationale behind this approach as he added: “I’m really happy with what we did. It’s crucial not necessarily for today or tomorrow, but for the long-term health of the club.
“We have to invest in top young players; we’ve been doing that for a long time now.”
As part of the development phase, young players will go out on loan with Ellery Balcombe, Michael Olakigbe, Ben Winterbottom, Tristan Crama, Myles Peart-Harris and Frank Onyeka all sent out on loan deals this summer.
Peart-Harris previously enjoyed solid loan stints at Forest Green Rovers and Portsmouth, where he helped the latter claim promotion to the Championship but has joined Swansea for this season.
“Myles did well at Forest Green and stepped up to Portsmouth. Now he’s stepped up again,” commented Gilles who believes that the 21 year-old midfielder needs regular game time.
“At this stage of his career, being on the bench or the fringes for us is not what he needed. We’ll see how he gets on.
Onyeka meanwhile has joined Augsburg which Giles explained was down to the fact that the Nigeria international “… wanted to start more games,” which both the player and club agreed was in his best interests.
Giles though is confident that Onyeka’s absence won’t be felt as he continued: “Frank is a different case. He’s played a lot of minutes for us – he was on the pitch 26 times last season – so letting him go is a little bit of a risk without an obvious replacement.
“But I’m very confident that we have the players to step in and take those minutes and it’s important for them and their development.”
Deadline Day saw one of this summer’s biggest transfer sagas conclude as Ivan Toney departed for Saudi Arabia’s Al-Ahli, which suited the club and Giles who was aware of potential interest in the England international.
“Everyone expected that there would be interest in Ivan. There could have potentially been more interest in him, as it happened.
“There was strong interest from Al-Ahli and clearly a desire from us to get a deal done.
“They wanted to buy him, and we were open to selling him, so the process came down to agreeing a valuation, which took time.”
Giles proceeded to pay tribute to Head Coach, Thomas Frank for his handling of Toney’s eventual exit once the season began, but was happy to get the transfer done for the sake of everyone involved.
“It went late into the window. It’s always a bit tricky when the season starts, but I think Thomas managed it well.
“We were really happy to get that done. Ivan’s done a great job for us, and he moves on to the next phase of his career.”
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