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  • Smart Money

  • The Fall and Rise of Brentford FC
  • By: Alex Duff
  • Narrated by: Chris Naylor
  • Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (12 ratings)

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Smart Money

By: Alex Duff
Narrated by: Chris Naylor
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Summary

In 1978, when Alex Duff first went to watch Brentford, players would go on midweek pub crawls near the Griffin Park stadium. Sometimes, in no fit state to go home, they would crash out in a terraced home where one of them lived opposite the stadium gates. The next morning, they clambered into a white van which one of them would drive to training, stopping on the way for a bacon sandwich and cup of tea at a greasy spoon café.

Brentford had once played in the top-flight but now, idling in the third division, were a second home for players and supporters, but there was neither the ambition nor money to revive their best days. They bumbled along until in 2005, fed up with trying to make a profit from a club with an ageing stadium in an unfashionable west London suburb, owner Ron Noades agreed to hand over the business to supporters on the condition they take over responsibility for their £5.5 million overdraft.

One of the fans, an Oxford University physics graduate called Matthew Benham, was making millions of pounds from professional gambling and threw in a £500,000 lifeline to help keep the club afloat. Initially, as a sort of academic challenge, he began figuring out if he could employ the mathematics which he used in beating the bookmakers to improve the club's performance on the pitch.

Smart Money is the story of how a scientist with an inquiring mind was set loose in a backwater of professional football, and how he turned a modest, little-known team into a competitor in one of the world's most-watched sports leagues.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2024 Alex Duff (P)2024 Hachette Audio UK
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What listeners say about Smart Money

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Interesting historical account

If you're a Brentford fan, you're probably going to love this. If you're not, it takes a bit too long to get going and get to the juicy bits that discuss Brentford's statistical accent to the Premier League. It's well written and interesting but wasn't quite what I was expecting.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Fascinating easily accessible history.

I enjoyed the book - I confess I thought it might have delved more into the analysis technique for players so a little disappointed on that but the social history around the club was really interesting. I’m not a Brentford fan but would still recommend the book to football fans.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Brilliant!!

Absolutely loved this book. Loved it! Up the Bees
Highly recommend to both football fans, as well as people interested in a great story about someone building a very small football team into a fully fledged premier league club. Matthew Benham deserves a statue outside the Brentford Community Stadium. Great club, fantastic man, leader & visionary!

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Worth reading for any football fan

Gives great insight to how modern Brentford have been built. This is surely the way that success will be achieved for every club in the future.

The book is balanced in 3 parts. First, the history of Brentford which is a great trawl through the history of English football and suburbian London. Second, the data machine that is Bennham and Brentford - this gives genuine insight to how they have done so well identifying players like Raya and Toney and outperforming their budget. Finally, there is a well balanced conclusion that poises a fair question - does the rise of gambling help or hinder the game? It has allowed Brentford’s owner to make hundreds of millions but that had their star striker (Toney) suspended. There is clearly a lot of grey, but the arguments presented is much of what makes this such an interesting read.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Decent insight

A good delve into the data that underpins the modern game, against a descriptive historical base.

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