Brentford chief Dykes: How we identified and signed Janelt

Brentford technical director Lee Dykes has lifted the lid on signing Vitaly Janelt.

Janelt arrived in 2020 from VfL Bochum.

Dykes recalled to the Bees website: We identified Janelt through scouting Germany Under-21 games - he always seemed to be in the top five performers for the youth national team. We couldn't work out why he wasn't playing regularly for Bochum.

I had to look deeper into that, of course. This resulted in me even speaking to the manager of Vitaly's favourite restaurant in Germany, which freaked him out a little when I told him!

We saw how versatile he was, being able to play left-back and left centre-back, in addition to his main no.6/no.8 positions.

He had a presence on the pitch and always wanted to take the ball in possession, whilst showing a real maturity and game understanding off the ball. Physically, he was also a good fit for the Championship and for the Premier League.

We had also decided that window that covering the 6 position and a player who could play as an 8 would be an area where we could add a very good, promising, undervalued asset to our squad, for amazing value: Vitaly ticked every box.

At the time the club had also done some top business in Ligue 2 [French second tier] and there was a collective understanding, internally, that 2 Bundesliga could be equally as productive for us."