Brentford and Bournemouth are stuck in a vicious cycle not of their own making ...Middle East

Milos Kerkez assists the opening goal before Brentford’s Bryan Mbeumo sets up Yoane Wissa for an equaliser. Christian Norgaard scores the winner for Thomas Frank’s team against a Bournemouth side whose defence contains Kerkez, Illya Zabarnyi and Dean Huijsen. There is a chance that none of those individuals will be involved in the same fixture in 2025-26.

For Brentford and Bournemouth, this is raiding season. Their mistake: both winning more Premier League matches in a season than they had before.

For Brentford, the head coach has left and the highest-profile players may come next. Bournemouth have kept hold of the manager, but the big cats are circling the training ground: Liverpool, Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain.

At this point, someone usually mentions Southampton, who became Premier League darlings for selling on-pitch assets for high prices to divisional rivals while remaining free from trouble, until the point that they completely borked the reinvestment element, made bad decisions and are now part of the yo-yo group with Premier League consolidation harder and harder.

And Southampton are relevant. Promoted clubs will be looking at Brentford and wondering if the Bees are the ones most likely to be caught next. Getting worse is a clear danger here, because it is hard to repeat your feats.

But then three of Southampton’s major sales – Luke Shaw, Adam Lallana and James Ward-Prowse – were academy graduates, an approach that Brentford and Bournemouth haven’t really taken.

Brighton sold Ben White in 2021 after finishing 16th – along with several other players for high fees to fellow Premier League clubs subsequently – and have finished ninth, sixth, 11th and eighth since.

Raiding season is undeniably a reinforcement of the Premier League’s food chain.

One theory was that the rise in revenues across the division might allow non-financially elite clubs to keep their players for longer. That hasn’t really happened: inequalities grow exponentially. Even when historically larger clubs fall to the division’s lower reaches, they retain their power and pull.

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But at the same time, the Premier League “rest” are themselves moving higher up the global football food chain through their presence in the Premier League.

Bournemouth and Brentford – both historically small clubs by most measures, that being a descriptor rather than a judgement – have annual revenues between £160 and £170m.

Those revenues are higher than Lazio, Werder Bremen, Valencia and Lille, to use one example from each of Europe’s other top four leagues.

As such, there will be little sympathy. Bournemouth sell Kerkez to Liverpool and respond by signing Adrien Truffert from Rennes at a lower price, but also one that the French club cannot afford to turn down.

This is the circle of life in football in 2025: you prepare for tomorrow by knocking on the door of someone probably doing the same.

For supporters of Bournemouth and Brentford, there are two disparate choices here. The first is to view the whole thing as a little depressing.

You strive to overachieve as standard and, when that happens, the glass ceiling above you is simply reinforced.

It’s not losing players and/or manager that hurts but the sense of helplessness in trying to hold back the tide of established wealth.

There are times when that feels like the appropriate response in the heat of the moment when you’re smarting about losing heroes overnight. But that helplessness can also seep in elsewhere.

Salut, Adrien

We're delighted to announce the signing of Adrien Truffert on a five-year deal from @staderennais pic.twitter.com/dnqibKbFgN

— AFC Bournemouth (@afcbournemouth) June 16, 2025

Last December, Brentford fielded a significantly changed team for a Carabao Cup quarter-final against Newcastle and lost. If you aren’t going to try your best to win trophies and your best individuals are going to leave, what’s the point?

The other option is to choose trust. See these these outgoings as compliments, proof that your club has methods that work and is probably in the rudest health of its entire existence.

If selling a player for £40m that you bought for less than half that amount is a reason to be sad, take a step back and appreciate the view in wider shot.

All the while, you commit to the processes that got you here in the first place, maximising your advantage in identifying and ultimately allowing the next crop of players to fulfil their potential.

That is how every smart business evolves. Selling players for a profit isn’t a sign of weakness but strength – why would your strength be a reason for sadness?

“We are aware that we don’t yet have the history or the brand of some clubs in the Premier League, so we have to work very hard to build both that and our revenue channels,” Brighton operations director Paul Mullen told The i Paper in April.

“There’s so much competition in the Premier League every season. We aren’t a club that can rest on our laurels.

“We’re continuing to look at how we can improve, whether that’s on the pitch through recruitment, whether it’s off the pitch through new revenue channels, whether it’s whether we can change some of our facilities to adapt to medical advances. What else can we do to attract the best young talent? You never see a standstill.”

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The real answer is that we must wait and see. An undervalued proportion of being a football supporter is taking a leap of faith and not allowing doubt to fill every empty corner.

It is hard and it is made harder by the drip-feed of information and the maelstrom of rumour and counter-rumour. We can find out too much without knowing what actually matters.

Brentford and Bournemouth are now entering the difficult second age: rebuilding a team. That is scary, fun, daunting and exciting all at once. But it is clearly an opportunity and an honour to embrace, if you can suspend your fear.

This column started with Bournemouth vs Brentford in March 2025. It ends with Bournemouth vs Brentford, this time in April 2009: two League Two clubs.

Then, Brentford hadn’t been in the second tier for 16 years, while Bournemouth had a 17-point deduction for being in administration.

If wondering which manager builds your next Premier League team and who will be in it are the questions, the answer is that life worked out alright.

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