There are definitely some hopeful signs this season, but I think the clearest thing to emerge so far is that this "Brentford stats model on a budget" is going to be a tough act to pull off.
Brentford have always operated on a decent budget since adopting the "Moneyball" approach in 2015, spending a lot of money (comparatively) to buy the likes of Watkins (£1.8 million), Toney (£5 million), etc. Even Peterborough, who look to find gems in the lower leagues, have spent plenty over the years (they bought Toney for £650,000, for example, selling him two years later to Brentford for a very tidy profit).
Maybe it's unfair to highlight Ed Francis here, but his signing shows how tough the Football Radar model is going to be. We basically chose to replace the most experienced player in the side, through whom most of the play went (I'm reminded of the Cheaterfield manager's repeated cries of "Doyle, Doyle, Doyle" to his players in the playoff last season), with the most inexperienced - and one who had spent very little time playing that role in the men's game (if any).
Francis can clearly pick a pass when he's got time and space (see his assist against Barnet and his pass to Mitchell leading to Roberts' goal against Wealdstone - or was it Aldershot? - earlier this season), and obviously we shouldn't be abandoning him at such at early stage. But he's not got much experience in men's football and we were basically signing him off of his performances for Man City's under-23s. It seemed telling to me that Harrogate didn't sign him after he was on loan there last season.
It all suggests that Football Radar need to be looking to sign players with some real experience on their CV (like Roberts and Rodrigues) rather than taking punts on totally unproven players. That's tougher now than a few years ago, because overseas signings are now seemingly out of bounds at our level, and more and more clubs are subsequently shopping in the same marketplace - many of whom we probably can't compete with financially.
