Marinus Dijkhuizen Takes Over as Brentford Head Coach

Marinus Dijkhuizen

Championship club Brentford have named Excelsior manager Marinus Dijkhuizen as their new head coach.

The 43-year-old Dutchman replaces Mark Warburton, who left at the end of the season despite reaching the play-offs.

Warburton led the Bees to promotion from League One last year but was told in February he would not be retained at the end of the campaign.

Dijkhuizen will be assisted by Roy Hendriksen, who joins the club from Dutch side NEC.

Warburton was involved in a disagreement with Brentford owner Matthew Benham over the future direction of the west London club, with Benham keen to increase the use of statistics in the club's recruitment of players.

Dijkhuizen will work with Rasmus Ankersen and Phil Giles, who were recently installed as co-directors of football at Griffin Park.

RESTRUCTURE

"The appointment of the new head coach was a very important part of the restructure of the football management we have been undertaking," Benham told the club website.

"We wanted someone who could share our vision for the future.

"We want to be an innovative club in everything we do and having a head coach who thinks in that way was very important."

Dijkhuizen took over as manager of Excelsior in January 2014 and led the side to 15th place in the Dutch Eredivisie last season, although they ended the campaign without a win in nine games.

A former striker, he had two spells as a player with the Rotterdam-based club and also spent time on loan at Dunfermline.

His assistant Hendriksen, 46, had a 16-year playing career in the Netherlands and had a spell as a coach at RKC Waalwijk before joining NEC in 2014.

MONEYBALL

Bees owner Benham has decided to change the club's management structure, with their future recruitment set to be based more on mathematical modelling and statistics which, allied to more traditional scouting methods, is referred to as a 'Moneyball' approach.

Moneyball is a system which emerged in baseball in which the smart use of undervalued statistics allowed financially disadvantaged teams to compete with better-resourced rivals.

"It has been important for us to find a coach who is open-minded, forward thinking and who has great man-management skills," said Ankersen.

"In the recruitment process, Marinus has shown all those qualities and we are confident that he will be able to succeed in the role as head coach."

Reproduced with acknowledgements to BBC Sport