Gavin Cooney
IN THEIR PLAYING days, Keith Andrews and Damien Duff would while away the long hours of international windows by playing chess. Few grandmasters could have anticipated the pair’s most recent moves.
First Duff abruptly walked out of Shelbourne, and then Andrews was handed his first head coach’s job with Brentford. In the Premier League with Brentford, no less.
The latter was a checkmate to conventional wisdom.
Since Les Reed’s infamous elevation to the Charlton manager’s job in 2006, only four men have been given their first manager or head coach’s role in the Premier League without any previous experience as a caretaker either at that club or elsewhere: Gareth Southgate at Middlesbrough in 2006; Gianfranco Zola at West Ham in 2008; Mikel Arteta at Arsenal in 2019; and now Andrews at Brentford.
Southgate and Arteta could benefit from playing careers at their respective clubs, while Zola also traded off legendary Premier League playing days. Andrews, by contrast, played 84 times in the Premier League for Blackburn and West Brom.
“It’s not the done thing in normal football clubs, but I don’t think we are a normal football club,” said Andrews upon being announced as Brentford’s head coach.
Not half. Brentford did speak to external candidates – including USA manager Mauricio Pochettino, as my colleague David Sneyd revealed – but elected to promote Andrews from his role as set piece coach. It’s in keeping with Brentford’s means of doing business at least: Thomas Frank had previously been Dean Smith’s assistant prior to his promotion.
When Andrews says that Brentford are not a “normal” club, he’s referring not just to their use of data, but their belief in it.
As Liverpool’s former director of research Ian Graham explains in his book, How to win the Premier League, Brentford, Brighton and Liverpool are the only clubs in the Premier League to truly believe in the data. While they don’t make any decisions based solely on data, they don’t make any decisions without the data, either.
That data is provided by owner Matthew Benham, whose insights plotted their improbable rise to the Premier League. The intelligence of their recruitment allowed them continually sell their best goalscorer without stalling collective progress: Scott Hogan, Neal Maupay, Ollie Watkins, and Ivan Toney all came and went without halting the club’s upward trajectory.
Given the club are going to lose their captain Christian Norgaard along with their best goalscorer in Bryan Mbeumo, Andrews needs the club’s recruitment success rate to remain high.
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Among Brentford’s other innovations under Benham has been to pilot the role of the set piece coach – to which Andrews was appointed last season – realising there was an edge to be gained on corners and free kicks.
Benham also looked at the balance of rewards in leagues which offered three points for a win and told every one of his head coaches that they were not attacking enough.
“In minute one, Brentford must attack. In minute 90, 1-0 up and down to 10 men, Brentford must attack”, writes Graham, recalling a past conversation with Benham.
Brentford moderated that approach once they reached the Premier League, and Frank showed an outstanding ability to be flexible and improvise. His teams could swap between a back three and a back four; they could defend in a low block and counter; and they could play a higher line and attack the opposition. (This is the quality identified by Spurs as a necessary corrective to Ange Postecoglou’s dogma.)
Andrews’ task will be to remain as adaptable as his predecessor.
keith-andrews-stephen-kenny-and-ruaidhri-higginsAndrews, Stephen Kenny and Ruaidhrí Higgins at an Ireland training session in 2020. Ryan Byrne / INPHORyan Byrne / INPHO / INPHO
Coleraine manager Ruaidhrí Higgins worked with Andrews when both were on Stephen Kenny’s staff with Ireland, and is backing him to meet the challenge.
“I always had a feeling Keith would be a really good head coach or manager, because of what people can see in interviews: he is really well spoken and very articulate”, says Higgins.
“On the inside, you see how he conducts himself with people. Not everyone sees it, but he is a really strong character.”
A staple of Sky’s EFL coverage and a regular on Irish TV and radio, Andrews was cultivating an impressive media career before he joined Kenny on the Irish U21s staff in 2019. As Higgins explains, these communications skills are necessary in the modern game.
“Even 10 or 15 years ago there wasn’t as much coaching in terms of the tactical side of things, but now players really want information, they crave it,” says Higgins. “Keith is very articulate in giving that information.
“Players will find excuses, that’s the way life is. The more excuses you can take away from them, the better. Keith is very good at taking away excuses, he is very good at covering every angle. Say you play a team floating between a back three and a back four: he will make sure the team is prepared to face both systems.
“Keith is very good at getting his point across, he presents really well, and he treats people with respect. His experience on TV has helped in that regard.”
Andrews showcased some of that attention to detail when working with Ireland, conjuring up the kick-off routines from which Brentford profited last season, and once running through a warm-up routine with a back four to disguise from the opposition the fact they were in fact playing a back three.
But what Andrews’ Irish tenure will not have prepared him for is the scrutiny and attention coming his way. Martin O’Neill has already mischievously wished him well in the role, saying that one of his most vitriolic critics will now learn how tough the job really is, while Roy Keane – who went out of his way in a 2020 interview with a showbiz journalist to call Andrews a “bullshitter” – is the highest-profile pundit in the game and sure to preside over some of Andrews’ games for Sky.
The fact Brentford’s head coach is just one cog in a larger collective will not be acknowledged by the Premier League’s wider media-industrial complex where perception, as Keane has previously told us, is reality.
Andrews has previously batted away Keane’s criticisms and insists he will not be affected by the attention coming his way from a sceptical English public.
“That toughness is the bit that people might not see,” says Higgins of Andrews, “he has that toughness and resilience, he will be very clear in his mind of what he wants, and how he is going to go about it, he won’t deviate from his plan as he beliefs.
“He is a tough man, Keith’s first cap was, what, when he was 28? That shows his level of resilience and determination. He had nothing handed to him in his career.”
Andrews went to Wolves as a youngster at the same as Robbie Keane, but where Keane flourished, Andrews faltered. Suffering from injuries and omitted from squads, Andrews fell into drinking too often, and flirted with quitting the game and moving to university in America. He ultimately dropped down the divisions and landed with a bump in League Two with MK Dons, where he found the break he needed in meeting manager Paul Ince.
Ince promised to take Andrews with him to his next job and was good to his word, taking him to Blackburn in the Premier League. Andrews outlasted Ince at Ewood Park but faced more adversity, become a target of fan abuse amid wider discontent at the ownership group. One newspaper described Andrews’ treatment as a “hate campaign”. Andrews always insisted he was not bothered by it all, until Steve Kean told him he was being dropped from the team for that very reason.
He therefore left for Ipswich to remain in the picture for Ireland, and he proved to be Ireland’s best performer within the chasm that lay between them and their opponents at Euro 2012.
He was the first of the Irish players to try to meet the step up in quality at that tournament, and now Andrews is the first to stand among the elite in the Premier League, where the lessons of his playing career must stand to him.