Perhaps in 30 years time we’ll be describing this lot as “the class of ‘25”. Well, not by me obviously because I’ll be dead.
Brentford didn’t have a youth set up/development team for years because their business model told them it was a waste of time. Then the Premier League told them they had to have one, so they set it up.
The way I understood it (with the help of wiki for timings) was that the Brentford Academy was closed at the end of the 2015–16 season. Brentford thought the academy system was not working. Players were getting poached, not enough kids came through the system for the investment. So they closed the academy and opened up the Bteam/development squad (more mature players all on contracts, so not to get poached) The Development Squad was renamed Brentford B and played friendly matches against senior, U23, U21 and academy teams, with a squad of players aged from 17 to 21. The team entered competitive cups for the first time during the 2018–19 season. In 2021 Brentford got promoted, and reopened the academy in 2022, because as Stan says they had to. In March 2023, Brentford opened a Development Centre for players between the ages of 9 and , the academy was awarded Category Two status and introduced groups from U9 to U16 level in 2024. The development squad still contains more mature players as well as a few academy players
