Brentford appoint Keith Andrews: Bees promoting set-piece coach to replace Thomas Frank as head coach is no surprise | Football News

slickJune 27, 2025

0 0 6 minutes read

Brentford has always been a bit eccentric as a football club – they always seem to know the solution before a problem occurs.

It started when the bees dismissed Mark Warburton in 2015 after obtaining their highest league in almost 70 years.

When their top scorer Neal Maupay was sold in Brighton in 2019, the club’s response was not to buy an alternative option but to convert the winger Ollie Watkins to an effective attacker. This happened when Ivan Toney left last summer, with Bryan Mbeumo and Yoane Wissa working in a similar vein.

In the last two times, they have sold their goalkeepers of the first choice, David Raya and Mark Flekken, they have already registered their replacements. There are three seasons, they even obtained a ninth place in the Premier League with their first choice four entirely on the left.

But replace Thomas Frank with their Keith Andrews set coach – who has no prior management experience – perhaps simply the most exceptional decision to date. But a surprise? Absolutely not.

Brentford has always been a club that adopts the promotion of the interior with regard to the first job, whatever their previous experience. This is how the boss of New Spurs, Frank, obtained his first role as head coach in England, but there was a heritage before that. Their last five winning promotion managers were all internal meetings.

The desire for continuity and to rely on the Premier League trip that Frank started is a main reason why they again made an internal candidate in Andrews.

During the last week of April, Frank conducted an exam from the Brentford season at a meeting of the coaches alongside the director of elite performance Ben Ryan in order to decide the areas to improve next season.

The bases and preparations were already underway. Andrews, who was in this meeting, is responsible for advancing this plan.

But why Andrews? Because the sets are a vital way that Brentford operates – and the West Londoners have paved the way in this department for a while.

They became the first team in England to hire a set-piece coach designated a decade ago, rather than the traditional method of delegating these tasks to an existing staff member. The rest of the Premier League understood.

Brentford’s first coach Gianni Vio was pinched by Leeds, then presented himself at the Porte de Tottenham and is now working in the same role for the United States.

Then came Nicolas Jover, who was picked up by Manchester City and is now gaining applause for his dead buffoons at Arsenal, who hired another Andreas Georgson bees Guru, who is now one of Frank’s Spurs’ Backroom Staff after a spell at Manchester United.

Manchester City of Pep Guardiola also hired Jack Wilson from Brentford – who held the same role at Wolves until last season – to lead their set department, while Chelsea pinched last summer of the predecessor of Set Andrews.

Brentford was a central cog in a “arms race” for set coaches. Whoever has the best chances of obtaining these marginal gains towards success. Everyone wants a piece of the set pie – and Brentford baked it.

“Brentford was the first club that was really invested in this,” said former Brentford analyst Marc Orti Esteban, who worked on club sets for two years before leaving for New England in February, explains Sky Sports.

“They started hiring sets of sets when no one else had one.

“Then, the rest of the clubs who have never heard of or have never had a set coach, if they seek to hire one, they will look at the guys who do it well and the guys who do it from the start.”

The last bizarre quirk that made the headlines last season was their ability to score directly from the start. The BEES scored at the first kick -off of the match in four consecutive games in the Premier League, including three coming in the first minute of the match.

The man responsible for this was Andrews, who entered the role of Brentford set and surveyed where he could add to this expertise. The kicks and the jets were the areas on which to work on.

“It deserves a big credit for that,” explains Esteban, who worked on these stratagems with Andrews and provided reports to the Irishman on all decorative questions.

“He knew that it was an opportunity for every match, maybe not scoring a goal but starting on the front foot, and it’s very well paid.

“I don’t think it’s normal to score four or five goals to kicks off. It’s not easy to repeat, but there was a match plan for sure.”

But although the starting blows were another set of sets, it required the same principles seen by Brentford in terms of open game.

A key element of the tactics “score from kick -off” was the ability to support. Of all the Premier League players last season, the bees had the most frequent presser by Mikkel Damsgaard and counter-press in Mbeumo.

“This is quite similar to what you can see from Brentford de Open Play, not just sets,” said Esteban about the goals of the kick -off.

“It is a question of being aggressive, of making sure that you are close to these second balls, of overbout of the areas where you know that the ball will go, then from there, try to put people in the box and try to get crosses, to try to create situations as soon as you can.”

Andrews was also responsible for the effective elements of Brentford last season, working closely with renown coach Thomas Gronnemark, who was also hired by Liverpool during the mandate of Jurgen Klopp.

Brentford scored six goals of long -ons last season – the 19 remaining premier clubs managed two of each other. Once again, this is the desire of the club’s set department, led by Andrews last season, to press each ounce more intelligently.

Brentford succeeds with their jets, prioritize them rather than neglecting them, you ask you why other teams still have to follow suit.

This adds to the feeling that Brentford is ahead of the curve, even if many will indicate the appointment of Andrews as a chief coach being a major risk for their first League references.

This argument was challenged by Brentford, who says thatrews was not only a club set of the club last season, but had larger areas of influence on Frank’s philosophy and culture.

They also implemented the need for experience in the Premier League. In a recent interview, the director of football Phil Giles raised the acceptable argument that Real Madrid would do well in the high flight of England, despite very few players with the Premier League football on their CV.

There is a lot of instability in Brentford at the moment. Frank left, Mbeumo can follow the step and Christian Norgaard heads to Arsenal. With the three clubs promoted to search for the regulars of the Premier League that they can finish above next season, Brentford seems the most unstable and the most uncertain. Andrews’ risky appointment does not help.

One thing is certain, however: the owner of Brentford, Matthew Benham, obtained the majority of decisions since his contribution in statistics 10 years ago. You would be stupid to bet against this.