Brentford Director of Football Phil Giles says he hopes to have two members of Keith Andrews’s backroom staff in place this week.
Speaking at the unveiling of Andrews as Brentford head coach, Giles said the club were looking at internal and external options to fill the four vacant backroom staff roles.
Following the departure of long-serving head coach Thomas Frank to Tottenham, first-team assistant coach Justin Cochrane, head of performance Chris Haslam and analyst Joe Newton left Brentford to join the Dane in north London.
Assistant Claus Norgaard also departed, leaving Brentford needing to make four new appointments to support Andrews as he embarks on his first head coach role.
“We've got a plan. I don't know if it's a master plan. But it’s definitely a plan. We've got four roles to fill. I think what we'll do is we'll go for one or two to begin with, and then we'll get that working and we'll take a step back and see how that's going,” Giles said.
“We’re looking at all options on the table, external, internal, exactly (the same as) when we did the process for Keith and we'll make a decision.
“Hopefully we'll get something, one or two (appointments) done this week.”
In his first address to the media as Brentford head coach, Andrews spoke with a quiet confidence and said that whilst he perhaps didn’t expect a Premier League job to come along so quickly, he’d been preparing to be a head coach for a number of years.
“Two or three years ago, I knew I was ready to be a head coach. Would I have foreseen it being this role at this level? Probably not, realistically. But the path I've taken has been very deliberate to get to this stage,” Andrews told the media inside the press conference room at the Gtech Community Stadium - a room that he’ll quickly become accustomed to, come rain or shine, as Bees head coach.
Greater obstacles lay ahead, but Andrews navigated his first press conference with an air of calm that will serve him well at a club that rarely panics.
Composure has been a theme regularly employed by Brentford since Frank’s departure and they’ll adopt the same attitude as they search for four new backroom staff members to support Andrews - a man of integrity but someone humble enough to admit he’ll be learning on the job.
