Ivan Toney has made it clear in multiple interviews that he wants to leave Brentford this summer. The forward has been one of their most important players since he joined from Peterborough United in August 2020 for £5million ($6.34m), scoring 72 goals in 134 appearances.
There is a lesser-known figure who arrived at Brentford around the same time as Toney who has also played an integral role in their success.
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Bernardo Cueva, who is originally from Mexico, was working for Chivas in 2019 when he contacted Brentford’s then-co-director of football Rasmus Ankersen and director of recruitment Lee Dykes about a potential job opportunity. They were impressed by Cueva and, after he was introduced to the other co-director, Phil Giles, he was appointed to the newly created role of tactical statistician in September 2020.
Cueva has spent the last four seasons supporting Thomas Frank but will be taking up a new role as the head of Chelsea’s set-piece department after this campaign finishes. The 36-year-old has worked for Norway’s national team and is part of Mexico’s setup. He has long-term ambitions of becoming a head coach and is studying for his UEFA Pro Licence.
Since August 2021, Brentford have scored 43 goals from set pieces and Cueva is responsible for their inventive routines. If you dig deeper into the data, Brentford have an expected goals figure (xG), which measures the quality of their chances, of 5.3 per 100 set pieces — only Everton (5.7) have a better record. Mauricio Pochettino will be hoping Cueva can work his magic at Stamford Bridge.
Set-piece coaches are a new trend and Brentford have led the way. Nicolas Jover worked under Dean Smith and Frank before becoming Pep Guardiola’s assistant at Manchester City. Jover was replaced by Andreas Georgson, who spent less than a year in west London before he moved to Arsenal in August 2020. When Georgson left to become Malmo’s sporting director, Jover became a part of Mikel Arteta’s backroom staff. Jack Wilson spent two and a half seasons with Brentford before he joined Manchester City in November 2022 and helped them win the treble.
Brentford have worked with other specialists, too, including throw-in coach Thomas Gronnemark and sleep expert Anna West. Former Olympic swimmer Jack Burnell was briefly employed as a mindset performance coach, while Ben Ryan, the former England and Fiji rugby union sevens head coach, became their director of elite performance in June 2022.
But how and why do Brentford hire these specialist coaches?
Everything can be traced back to June 2012 when Matthew Benham became Brentford’s owner. They had just finished ninth in League One under Uwe Rosler, but Benham had ambitions of reaching the Premier League.
Two years later, then-sporting director Frank McParland approached Bartek Sylwestrzak through a mutual contact. Sylwestrzak gave a presentation to Benham about how he could improve the ball-striking technique of the first-team squad.
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“I’ve worked in professional football for 14 years and many people are not open-minded, but Matthew was different from the beginning,” Sylwestrzak tells The Athletic. “He was looking for any way to help the team improve and was open to innovation. He bought into my work and was willing to implement it. He saw the technical value of what I was doing.”
Sylwestrzak carried out individual training sessions with Yoann Barbet, Nico Yennaris and John Swift to improve their free kicks, while he focused on refining Ollie Watkins and Neal Maupay’s open-play shooting.
“I would work with them on every aspect of the technique including the approach, swing shape and foot position,” Sylwestrzak, who left Brentford in 2018 and now works with some of the best talent in the Premier League and other top European divisions, says. “We would work on different types of strikes with different players, depending on the player’s technical and physical predispositions, his position on the pitch and tactical needs.
“There is no systematic method to develop ball-striking techniques in professional football. Neither academy nor first-team players receive specific technical instructions for this aspect of their game. When I coach a first-team player at the top level, we start from scratch — he either has not received any technical guidance about ball striking or may have been given incorrect information.”
Brentford finished second in League One in the 2013-14 season and then reached the Championship play-offs, where they were eliminated by Middlesbrough. Benham appointed Ankersen and Giles as co-directors of football the day after the second leg.
Giles had previously worked under Benham for the betting company Smartodds, while Ankersen — who is the chief executive of Sports Republic, which owns Southampton — was chairman of Danish side Midtjylland. Benham had a controlling stake in Midtjylland from 2014 to 2023 and during that period, they won the title on three occasions and qualified for the Champions League for the first time.
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Brentford had one of the lowest budgets in the division, but they gained an edge over their rivals by combining traditional scouting methods with data-driven analysis. They signed Watkins from Exeter City for £1.8m and sold him three years later to Aston Villa for £33m including add-ons. Brentford’s mantra was that if they could not outspend their opponents, they needed to outthink them.
“We need to make the business sustainable by buying cheap and selling expensive,” Ankersen told Sky Sports. “It comes down to not only being able to identify undervalued talent in the market, but also we invest a lot in the development of players. We invest in different types of specialists, whether it be sleep coaches, kicking coaches, to try to raise the level of the players who come in. Then we make the asset worth more than it was before.”
Set pieces were highlighted as an area where the team could improve and Gianni Vio, a former banker with 4,830 different set-piece routines, was hired for the 2015-16 campaign. Vio went on to help Italy win Euro 2020 and later became a part of Antonio Conte’s backroom staff at Tottenham Hotspur.
Vio was replaced by Jover, who was working for French side Montpellier when he heard about Brentford’s interest in set pieces. Then head coach Smith interviewed Jover and decided to hire him. It was a smart decision as Brentford scored 46 set-piece goals across three seasons until Jover was persuaded by Arteta, Guardiola’s assistant at the time, to join Manchester City in the summer of 2019.
Georgson arrived from Malmo a few months later to take over Jover’s role. Georgson was familiar with the senior figures at Brentford because he had visited their training ground while studying for his Pro Licence. Giles and Dykes, who is now technical director, like inviting different people to the training ground and the director’s box so they can share ideas with them.
Brentford had only scored one set-piece goal in 16 games before Georgson’s appointment. They immediately improved and scored 16 times from set pieces in their next 34 matches. Those goals were a key factor in Brentford finishing third in the league, two points behind West Bromwich Albion, who were automatically promoted, and reaching the play-off final. Georgson left after their 2-1 defeat to Fulham at Wembley, which created an opening for Cueva.
It might be frustrating that these coaches are always poached by other teams, but Brentford receive compensation fees and their track record suggests they should not have any problems replacing Cueva.
There are a couple of examples from this season of how Cueva’s clever schemes have generated chances for Brentford. During their 2-1 defeat at the Emirates Stadium this month, seven players crowd around Arsenal goalkeeper Aaron Ramsdale while Vitaly Janelt prepares to take an inswinging corner. Frank Onyeka and Mads Roerslev’s positions on the edge of the box mean every outfield player is in Arsenal’s half.
Janelt makes a signal and the group in the box shifts positions. Christian Norgaard is going to make a run towards the near post to distract multiple players and create space for Toney.
Janelt takes the corner and Toney is completely unmarked while the ball is in the air.
Toney makes contact with the ball, but his header is saved by Ramsdale. The initial positioning of Brentford’s players inside the six-yard box created confusion and made it difficult for Arsenal’s defenders to track their movement.
When Brentford have a set piece or throw-in, Cueva will stand on the edge of the technical area dishing out instructions. Brentford’s opening goal when they beat Chelsea 2-0 in October must have caught the attention of his new bosses.
Bryan Mbeumo is lurking behind Marc Cucurella and then darts in front of him.
Mathias Jensen throws the ball towards Mbeumo and receives it back.
Jensen floats the ball over Cucurella.
Mbeumo keeps it in play before he loops a cross towards the back post.
Brentford centre-back Ethan Pinnock bursts into the box out of nowhere and powers a header past Robert Sanchez. It was a simple and effective move designed to draw Chelsea’s defenders towards the ball before exploiting the space at the back post.
Brentford’s aggressive approach from set pieces means things sometimes go wrong. During Cueva’s first season, in the 2021 play-off semi-final second leg, Arnaut Danjuma scored on the counter to give Bournemouth a 2-0 lead on aggregate. Brentford produced a memorable comeback to win 3-2 before defeating Swansea City in the final at Wembley.
Vio, Georgson, Jover and Cueva were all given the freedom to try new things and learn from their mistakes. “The bigger the club, the bigger the pressure from the outside, the more push to the short term,” Georgson told The Athletic in November 2021. “If you’re a smaller club, you’re left more alone.
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“If you don’t have people questioning every little decision you make, then it’s also easier to make brave, innovative, risky decisions on how to do things. Because if they go wrong — which they sometimes do if you want to be innovative — it’s not the end of the world. You’re not gonna get sacked because of this.
“This is a big strength of Brentford and it comes from the owner down to the players. Everyone knows what they’re about.”
