Who To Pick From Brentford

Drafting from Brentford

Nobody at Brentford is rated 82 or above. Not one. Every other club in the top fifteen has at least one player who clears that bar, and Brentford's answer is a squad of 26 with a power rating of 79, fourteenth, and a spread of four that confirms what the ceiling told you: this is a flat, tidy, capped roster. Newcastle at three are flatter still, but nobody in the top fifteen is as capped. The best you can do here is 81, twice.

Those two 81s are Caoimhín Kelleher in goal and Mikkel Damsgaard at attacking midfield, and between them it is Damsgaard without much argument, because an equal rating in the position that shapes possession beats one in the position that touches the ball least. Nathan Collins at 80 is the fallback if your defence is the emergency. Note what you cannot have: Kelleher and Collins are both Irish, a clean compatriot pairing sitting right there in the top three, and the rule means you take one and watch the other vanish with the club. That is the cruellest version of this game's arithmetic, and it bites hardest here, because the top five run Ireland, Denmark, Ireland, Germany and Burkina Faso, with no English player in sight despite England being the largest bloc in the squad at five of 26.

The opinion worth defending is about timing, not the player. Brentford is the club you want the wheel to give you early and dread receiving late. Early, an 81 is a perfectly respectable body in a mostly empty XI and you move on. Late, when you have one slot left and it happens to be central midfield, Brentford's weakest group at five players averaging 75, this squad has nothing that lifts your side. The exception is the legends board, where Ivan Toney stands at 92 up front, eleven above anything Brentford can field now. Otherwise, get it done and get out.