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."
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