Speaking at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in an interview with Men in Blazers, Brentford owner Matthew Benham said Keith Andrews was the “clear” and “logical” choice to replace Thomas Frank, and admitted the club were surprised by the backlash.
Matthew Benham has explained why Brentford were so confident in promoting Keith Andrews last summer, insisting the club saw him as the standout successor to Thomas Frank even as the appointment was met with doubt outside west London. Speaking at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in an interview with Men in Blazers, Brentford’s majority owner said Andrews emerged as the “clear” and “logical” candidate after an internal process involving several senior figures at the club. Andrews was appointed head coach in June 2025 after Frank left for Tottenham Hotspur.
Benham says Andrews was the obvious choice
Benham said the decision was made collectively rather than driven by one voice. He explained that he, director of football Phil Giles, technical director Lee Dykes and head of performance Ben Ryan all went away separately to think about candidates before comparing notes. “All four of us thought, you know, Keith seemed like a really, really strong candidate,” Benham said. He described Andrews as “an amazing communicator” and a “fantastic leader”, adding that the club already knew he worked well with players and staff.
That background matters. Andrews had only joined Brentford’s first-team staff as Set-Piece Coach in July 2024 and was officially appointed head coach a year later, but the club’s public line at the time was that he was a strong fit for the existing structure rather than a reset appointment.
Surprise at the backlash
Benham also admitted Brentford were taken aback by the reaction once the appointment became public. “We gave it a little bit of thought, but not an enormous amount of thought,” he said. “But it seemed to us, it just seemed that Keith was like the clear, logical candidate.” He added that, once the announcement was met with uproar, the club briefly wondered whether it had misread the mood. Even then, his core point did not change. From Brentford’s perspective, Andrews remained the “clear” and “outstanding” option.
Benham also linked the choice to the way Brentford are built. He said the club’s first instinct when a player or staff member leaves is to ask whether there is somebody already inside the building who knows the culture, the structure and “their place”. He also drew a distinction between a head coach and an old-style manager, saying Brentford are not looking for an all-powerful “auteur” figure but for someone who can lead within a wider collaborative model.
Results have strengthened Brentford’s case
The defence of Andrews has been helped by Brentford’s season. The club announced on 26 February that the head coach had signed a new long-term contract until 2032, with the Bees sitting seventh in the Premier League and having reached the new year with a club-record points total for that stage of a top-flight campaign.
Andrews’ first season has also pointed to clear on-pitch trends: they lead the Premier League for accurate long balls at 23.2 per 90 minutes, remain top for shots-on-target percentage at 38 per cent and for expected goals per shot at 0.17, while the number of shots they concede per game has fallen from 17 last season to 12.6 under Andrews.
Across Europe’s top five leagues, only Bayern Munich have scored more goals from counter-attacks than Brentford’s nine.