It's Not All Gray: The Positives on Andre's Move
- essentialbrentford
- Aug 21, 2015
- 3 min read
After weeks of speculation, it has been confirmed that Andre Gray has moved to Burnley for a fee believed to be in the region of £9m.
Many Bees fans are understandably upset, and many have taken to social media to voice their disappointedness at the club, the player, and the owner.
However, there are many positives to take out of Andre's departure, and we thought we'd give a reminder of a few things that we should all be happy about...
1. The System Works
The highly scrutinised 'moneyball' system that Brentford have adopted clearly works. Gray's departure is a clear indicator of this. A player that was bought for £500K has been sold on for 18 times as much! At the end of the day, who would have thought he would have such a big price tag after a year.
The same system which was used to recruit Jota, Odubajo and indeed Andre Gray will now be used to find a replacement for the forward. Many are doubting the policy of the club but at the end of the day the tactic of buying undervalued players and then selling them on is what has brought us from mid-table League 1 status to pushing for Premier League football.
Brentford Football Club has been using statistics since the days of Uwe Rosler, just not to the same extent as we are now. Recently there has been a revolutionisation to make stats and mathematical modelling a much bigger part of all aspects of the club, but what many fans don't realise is that we have been using these methods to a much smaller extent for a long time.
2. Record Transfer Fee
The fee that we will receive for Gray is believed to be between £9m-£10M. About 20% of this will go to Luton (who must be thrilled with this outcome), but we are still left with a large sum of money for a player that in April (after the Derby match), many were saying wasn't good enough to play at Championship level.
As we tweeted earlier this week, before Gray's sale Brentford had received £17.6m in transfer fees since 1992. It is easy to forget where we've come from, and receiving a fee which is larger than Manchester City paid for Fabian Delph for a player that was playing in the Conference South three years ago isn't bad going.
Furthermore, many are harkening back to the "Old Brentford", who sold their best players on the cheap and did not bring in adequate replacements. Whilst Gray was certainly a key player, he has been sold at our valuation of him and on our terms.
As Beesotted pointed out on Twitter earlier this week, would you rather be selling Andre Gray for £9m, or buying Andre Gray for £9m?
3. Vast Improvements to the Squad
This time last year our attacking force consisted of an injured player that we bought from Rochedale who was out for the season, a player who we'd just acquired from the Conference who had no experience at this level, and a Spaniard who was unfamiliar with the pace and tempo of the English language, let alone the English football leagues.
Yes, Dallas and Gray have gone, but we are still in a much better position than we were one year ago. Hoffman has looked very good so far; his passing range, ability to hold the ball up and his fierce left foot stand him in good stead, and it is nice to have an aeriel threat on the pitch who isn't Nick Proschwitz. It wouldn't be surprising to see him end the season with around 15 goals (and for the doubters, how many did you honestly think Gray would get at the start of last season?).
Add Lasse Vibe and Akaki Gogia to the equation and we have a more than threatening front three. With Sebastian Haller heading to England to join either us or Sunderland, we could have a real gem among our ranks.
Additionally, many would have forgotten that we still have three loan signings to make (check out our article on who we could/should bring in with regards to loanees).
All in all we are not doomed, and still have the squad and infrastructure to mount a serious challenge for promotion, provided the fans get behind the team and the club.
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