England and international football

Brennan is a fine player with bags of potential - lightning quick (provably - that stat that showed he had the second fastest top speed in the division), quality finisher (almost always hits the target, even when running at pace) and getting better at finding space.

However, he didn't make the team for the Chelsea or Arsenal games and his lack of physical strength (especially his reluctance/refusal to challenge for headers) means you need another striker alongside him. Awoniyi has looked poor on the left, when we've played split strikers with MGW behind and MGW is wasted on the left when we've played more of a front three. I can see why, if you are taking a hard-headed decision, Johnson would have a price for the club and why they might not want to push his pay up to the levels of some of the top earners if he's not a must pick.

Hopefully, he and Cooper can find a way to make it work as it seems like a massive shame if he does leave.

I find a lot of Athletic articles get too bogged down in meaningless stats and graphs - that's the American influence as you know only too well how obsessed the US market is with statistics.
I did find it quite interesting about the measure of success though - explains why 'lesser' footballing nations tend to be better at youth level (Israel in the semi-finals for example)

Nah. He's an absolute weapon and an extraordinary tool for a variety of tactics.

He's great. But, if everyone's available, he probably doesn't start at Arsenal, ManU, Chelsea, Man City or Liverpool.

Which means he's only playing half of our first 10 games - admittedly that's largely a function of our weird fixture list - but is it really realistic to turn down, say, £40m plus some add-ons for someone who's not an automatic first choice?

Yes it's absolutely realistic that we would keep a game-changer, especially when he's so closely linked to the club.

Ah. Then yes, I agree it's much more likely.

I also agree with the view that there is a price at which I'd sell him. I don't think it's a coincidence that the little run of form at the end of the season to keep us up coincided with him coming out of the starting lineup, and depending on what Steve wants to do with the team next season I can easily see him not being an integral part of the XI. Ask yourself this: if you're in the school of thought that wouldn't accept, say, 40M for him, turn the conversation around. If he had been playing for someone else they way he has been playing for us, how would you feel about the club paying 40M for him?

I think if I was a Brentford fan I'd be very happy at getting him for £40m.

When they offered 30M a few weeks ago an awful lot of them felt it was quite a lot of money for him. I'm not saying that he isn't a fantastic talent or that he can't add a lot more to his game, just that he's seemingly less integral to our success than we might have expected a year ago and that if we have to sell someone to ensure that we can continue to add key players while remaining within FFP limits, there is a price at which I wouldn't be immensely upset.

Of course, it's entirely possible that we make the additions necessary to play more of a possession based game than we were able to last season and Brennan becomes a 20 goal scorer worth 100M. I don't have a crystal ball for these things.

Depends. Is it 40M we’d spend on another MGW, or 40M we’d spend on a couple of Dennis’. It’s a lot of money, but I don’t think I’d back us to spend it and end up better off.

I think people read too much into his not starting in those important games at the end. We were competitive above the expected level all season, and he was a big part of that. I’d rather have BJ than 40M to spend on someone else.

The ‘if you’re not a seller at the price, you must therefore be a buyer’ line doesn’t work with footballers because they are not commodities. Known quantities are worth more than unknown ones, and players are worth different amounts to different clubs for all sorts of reasons. So I’d be nervous of signing someone else’s BJ-a-like for that fee, less so about keeping ours.

The other side, of course, is that he was the only player to take part in all 38 league games (any player being consistently available is a huge asset) and played the second most minutes of any player.

We ended the season with an effective plan to manage our injuries and retain defensive solidity.
If we are seriously dreaming about mid-table obscurity next year then we need more plans, and having an injury-resistant, lightning-fast, proven goalscorer and creator, with a fantastic understanding of our key attackers would seem to be essential to tactical flexibility.

Especially since, as already noted, he was still extensively used when not a starter, because that strengths can be even more effective against tired end-of-season legs.

He's not unsellable, but I would want silly money unless he's agitating.

Who played the most minutes.?

Gibbs-White.

Sorry, I read it wrong. I thought you were saying MGW was 2nd, which confused me.

Last minute deal getting the U21 final on CH4.