Brentford’s Supremacy Rating: The anti-panic metric powering their rise

Several pundits tipped the Bees for relegation at the start of the season following the departures of Head Coach Thomas Frank, as well as star playing trio Bryan Mbeumo, Yoane Wissa and Christian Nørgaard.

However, they currently sit ninth and on track for a first-ever European qualification – a remarkable achievement given the scale of  summer change.

Speaking on the TGG Podcast, Ryan explained how the Supremacy Rating takes the short-term emotion out of decision making.

“In any sport, but particularly in football, you’re marked to market every week,” said the 54-year-old, who joined the club in June 2022 after guiding Fiji Rugby Sevens team to Olympic gold in 2016.

“How people come in on the Monday after the Saturday is largely down to how we’ve done at the weekend. Emotions and decision-making can sometimes fall too heavily on that side of things, so this is one of the tools we have that gives us that chance to take a breath and actually look at things more strategically.”

“We have our own internal statistical model that a number of us get every week, that gives us a number on how we’re performing in relation to the rest of the league. It takes away the randomness. You know, it’s a low scoring game. You lose games you shouldn’t and you win games you shouldn’t.

“We look at the wider performance and within that model you can also get stuck into the granular detail of where in particular things are going well or not so well.

“We’ve had that Supremacy Rating go up after losing and we’ve had it go down after winning. It just gives you a really good chance to take a break, a breath, and look at things with a far more considered eye.”

When asked if he knew what fed into the Rating, Ryan laughed and said, “I do, yeah” and explained “there’s stuff that as a club we keep to ourselves.”

Ryan called it “a brilliant metric” but was careful to place it in context: “It’s incredibly important, but it’s not what drives the internal decisions on what’s going on as far as our performance is concerned.

“We can’t say, ‘Oh look, our Supremacy Rating puts us at 15th’ and we finish 18th and are getting relegated. The Premier League aren’t going to suddenly change a decision.”

“He’s very open and inclusive and he knows his mind as well and he’s brought a lot of energy… It’s been a top year – really enjoyed it and there’s a good buzz about the club at the moment.”

Ryan, who oversees a broad high-performance remit including sport science, medical, data and technology, research and development, player care, team operations, catering, nutrition and logistics, revealed this confidence was sustained despite an opening-day 3-1 defeat to Nottingham Forest.

“We started the season a bit undercooked,” he said. “A few players hadn’t got back into the building and weren’t fit enough… But internally we knew there was always going to be a little bit of a hiccup as we changed our physical model, our training model and everything else.

“We had a few injuries that were three, four-day injuries that we knew we were going to get and predicted. And we predicted that we’d also get out of it pretty quickly and that’s exactly what happened.

“We’d said to everybody, ‘Look, this is going to happen, but don’t worry, none of them are going to be significant. And we’re going to get the benefits of getting them fitter and more robust. Just hold the line, hold the faith.’ It was a testament to the culture that everyone stuck together.”