Brentford launch new cohort of pioneering PhDs

The research is published and also fed back to Brentford’s football department, including Head of Performance Ben Ryan and Manager Thomas Frank. 

Every year, the Bees hire about half a dozen PhD students to conduct research. Previous PhDs have included a comparison of positional demands in the Premier League and Ligue 1, the impact of match location on high-intensity running, and how high-speed running and sprinting is impacted by the quality of the opposition.

The collaboration between Brentford and Cardiff Met is overseen by Dr Ryland Morgans, a former Head of Performance at Everton, Liverpool, Crystal Palace and Wales.

Morgans is a researcher at Cardiff Met – where he himself gained a PhD in Football Science – as well as being the Consultant Head of Research and Insights at Brentford. He is both a highly experienced sports scientist and a UEFA Pro Licence coach who has been Assistant with the Ivory Coast national team and a Technical Coach at Luton Town. 

This combination of academic and football experience means Morgans inherently knows how research can be applied in the field. Professor Jon Oliver is also heavily involved with the Studentships and told TGG that they “combine postgraduate research with the development of practitioner-based skills.”

The latest studentships will run for three years and begin on August 1st. Brentford will cover tuition fees of £5.5k for each student, as well as providing an annual stipend of £20,780.

Brentford’s 2023/24 accounts revealed they spent about £16m on research into sports science, medical, training and tactics over the course of the previous two years. They received £3.23m of public money towards this as part of the government’s Research and Development Tax Credit Scheme.

While a mass of tracking data is available to all Premier League clubs, the amount of physiological and biological data remains relatively sparse. This is where Brentford hope the Studentships can give them an advantage. 

In a new book, Smart Money: The Fall and Rise of Brentford FC, Bees Sporting Director Phil Giles explained: “Can we collect some information that starts to benchmark players? 

“Can this player step into the Premier League and play at the physical intensity that the Premier League demands?”

So far, the PhD students have published nine academic studies. The author of Smart Money, Alex Duff, said “many” of the studies were “inconclusive” and that “it’s fair to assume that Brentford are keeping the most revealing pieces of research to themselves.”