Brentford's performance director Ben Ryan has revealed how the Bees aim to compete with the biggest clubs in the Premier League, despite their budgets being on opposite ends of the spectrum.

Ryan, who joined the club last summer, coached the Fiji sevens team to a gold medal at the 2016 Rio Olympics, and was brought in to help the west Londoners reach even higher levels of performance across both players and staff.

And the 52-year-old described how, in his position at the club, he aims to find that extra edge to help Brentford on and off the pitch.

“We can go toe-to-toe with Man City on [certain] things because the bottom-line money isn’t going to stop us - it’s not a £100m striker,” Ryan told The Guardian.

“Every department here, we’re setting them the objective to be the best in the Premier League.”

On how he aims to gain that extra edge, he added: “You want to be in an environment that you want to stay in.

“Let’s be honest, every Premier League team has a decent amount of cash to spend. They can just go, ‘Yeah, we’ll get that bit of kit or let’s create a new job.’

“Increasing the headcount, in the short term, solves problems, but if we get to a point where we don’t know everyone in that building by name and what they’re doing then we’re going away from what we want."

And Ryan went on to discuss the importance of a positive culture around the club, which feeds into the day-to-day activity at the Robert Rowan Performance Centre.

“We want to be the happiest club in the league and the world,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean we’re happy to lose. We’d be very unhappy if we’re not in the Premier League.

“You don’t have to be that club where interns are sleeping under the desk because they think more hours means they’re showing their worth or where there are certain areas of the training ground where you can’t walk: ‘Don’t walk down there, that’s just for the manager and the first-team coaches.’

“We want to make sure we are at optimal standard for as long and as often as we can.”