Brentford owner Matthew Benham have revealed that he nearly signed four players for the Premier League club, and they've since cost other teams a total of £266.2m in combined transfer fees. Two now play in the English top-flight, while one is currently a Champions League star.
Benham has been in full control of the Bees, his boyhood club, since 2012, when they were playing in the English third tier. Thanks to clever investment, they've since risen to the Premier League, and have impressed many since their 2021 promotion from the Championship.
The club owner made his money through gambling and got his break in 2001 when Tony Bloom, who later became the owner of Brighton & Hove Albion, hired him to work at Premier Bet. With that past in mind, it's no wonder Brentford have been able to take a chance on lesser-known players and turn them into genuine stars.
The likes of Ollie Watkins, Ivan Toney, David Raya, and Yoane Wissa have also been sold for huge profits in recent years, but that doesn't mean Benham has been perfect when it comes to recruitment.
Matthew Benham Could Have Signed Premier League Pair For £4m
omar marmoush
Speaking at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston, Benham revealed that Brentford could have signed Eberechi Eze and Omar Marmoush for a combined fee of just £4m. He recalled:
"There's always going to be ones you regret.I was saying before that we could have signed Eze for £4m I think in 2019. We could also have signed Marmoush on a free about three years ago.
"[We could have signed both] for about £4m combined."
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Eze would star for Crystal Palace, winning them the FA Cup, before sealing a £67.5m move to Arsenal last summer as he hopes to get his hands on more silverware in north London.
Marmoush made a name for himself as Eintracht Frankfurt before joining Manchester City in 2025. The Egyptian cost an initial fee of £59m, but that figure could rise to a further £4.2m if certain bonuses are met.
Brentford Also Missed Out on Two More Big Names - One Was a Dodged Bullet
There is another player who has since ended up at a Premier League club, although things haven't actually worked out for him since. Benham also mentioned a fourth player who now plays at Bayern Munich, having spent some time in England too. Explaining why those deals didn't get across the line, he said:
"The summer we got promoted to the Premier League, there was actually two players that scouted amazingly, amazingly well.
"One was [Mykhailo] Mudryk which was maybe a bit complicated if we signed, although we were quite close to signing him for a low fee, for about €20m. Eventually, he went for more like €80m though he's currently serving a drug ban.
"Then Michael Olise, his scouting was unbelievable, out of this world but we just got promoted and we weren't used to the crazy agent fees in the Premier League at the time.
"The agent fee for that one was so insanely high that we stepped away, even though there was part of us thinking 'well, if you combine the agent fee and the transfer fee, it's kind of not too bad,' but the agent fee on its own was just so insane that we stepped away. There's always going to be ones you miss out on."
It looks as though Brentford were quite lucky to miss out on Mudryk. He later joined Chelsea in a deal worth up to £89m but mustered 10 goals and 11 assists in 73 appearances before the FA charged him with violating anti-doping rules, meaning he hasn't played since 2024.
Benham will certainly regret not paying Olise's agent those extra fees. Instead, the Frenchman joined Crystal Palace before he then made them £50.7m as he moved to Bayern Munich. bagged 33 goals and 48 assists in 91 outings to date, winning the Bundesliga in 2024/25.
In total, the combined fees Arsenal, Man City, Chelsea and Munich have spent on the four players mentioned come to a total cost of £266.2m