Very occasionally the Premier League throws up stories that make us feel like we have absolutely no idea about how football actually works.
It’s an uncomfortable feeling, so we tend not to dwell on it; tend instead to simply give gushing praise to the surprise success as if their overachievement is directly proportional to our own expectations, which helpfully just so happens to protect our egos.
Keith Andrews is a genius, then.
His first half-season as Brentford manager has been the spectacular reveal of a new superstar coach in the making and it won’t be long until he is quite rightly funnelled into a bigger job. It isn’t our fault we got it so wrong.
There is simply no way we could have seen his quiet brilliance coming.
Brentford were everybody’s favourite pick for relegation at the start of the campaign after a summer in which they lost their long-standing manager, foolishly promoted the set-piece coach to his first management job, and promptly sold their three best players in Bryan Mbeumo, Yoane Wissa, and captain Christian Norgaard.
The way they have miraculously defied those predictions is one of the most unpredictable storylines in recent Premier League history, and if Brentford hold onto their current spot in the top seven and qualify for Europe there is a genuine argument it is the biggest overachievement since Leicester won the title in 2015/16.
It is only when we try to look for an explanation for how that happened that the extent of our own ignorance is revealed, because while it would be grossly unfair to downplay the job Andrews is doing there is a mirror-image situation happening at Tottenham that reveals how we got it so wrong.
Thomas Frank was going to be exactly what Spurs needed: a flexible tactician, a pragmatist with a clear eye for tactical strategy, and a coach who maximised the talents at his disposal.
But taken out of the Brentford ecosystem he looks completely lost.
The cult of the manager is a peculiarly English tradition that refuses to die. We follow a ‘great man’ theory of history here, where decade after decade a single figurehead - running the entire operation – has dominated the game.
The list is pretty conclusive: George Ramsey at Aston Villa in the 1890s, Herbert Chapman at Arsenal and Huddersfield in the 1920s and 1930s, Matt Busby at Manchester United in the 1950s and 1960s, Bob Paisley for Liverpool in the 1970s and 1980s, Sir Alex Ferguson at Man Utd in the 1990s and 2000s, and Pep Guardiola at Manchester City over the last decade.
This is how English football has always worked. It is no surprise that as it changes – as power is taken away from the manager and complex supporting structures are put in place - we are inevitably slow to catch up.
Brentford replaced Norgaard with Jordan Henderson, Mbeumo with Dango Ouattara, and, most impressive of all, Wissa with Igor Thiago. All three have been a huge success, which is not just a testament to the scouting network that underpinned all those years under Frank but also how much easier it is to glide into the slipstream at a well-run club.
Brentford have survived post-Wissa because Thiago is superb, but Thiago is superb because he has been able to slot directly into a team working perfectly.
The same goes for Andrews, of course. We have collectively undersold the value of a ‘head coach’ system at a well-run club, which is to say that the position really is easier – the role, quite simply, to coach – and we have struggled to come to terms with that.
And we probably won’t ever really learn. T
he next phase of this Brentford project is probably Andrews moving to a club like Newcastle or Aston Villa, where he will suddenly look completely out of his depth and will take all the blame for it.
Meanwhile Brentford will continue to climb, one eyebrow raised to the madness of an industry that refuse to catch up to their modern way of doing things.
More from Sporting Life
Safer gambling
We are committed in our support of safer gambling. Recommended bets are advised to over-18s and we strongly encourage readers to wager only what they can afford to lose.
If you are concerned about your gambling, please call the National Gambling Helpline / GamCare on 0808 8020 133.
Further support and information can be found at begambleaware.org and gamblingtherapy.org.