Brentford director of football Phil Giles believes that the Bees' high-performance culture can only succeed if everyone, from top to bottom, is fully aligned.

Giles was talking with Jake Humphrey and professor Damian Hughes on the latest episode of the High Performance Podcast, and began by discussing how Brentford try to take a long-term view in the instant success world of professional football.

“Fundamentally, a high-performance environment is all in the mind; it’s that willingness to reach the next level,” said Giles.

“When your owner is so aligned to a high-performance environment and just being better every day, and he isn’t judging the results themselves but rather the underlying performances and what’s happening on the ground day to day, that means that people can actually be confident and faithful to that belief.

“One of the things about football is that you can go home after a game on Saturday and the league table is on national news. You are effectively putting on the television a judgement on how you are doing.

"It’s about trying to ignore that and not use that to judge your success.

“We are going to judge it on the process we are putting in place and whether we believe that will ultimately lead to success in the future.”

When asked what some of the most important areas are when it comes to creating that high-performance environment, Giles was clear in his answer.

“The recruitment part of football is so unbelievably important; it really drives a lot of what happens,” he continued.

“It’s unbelievably important to think about how somebody fits as a player into the existing group, and it’s also important to think with staff about what personality traits, character, and ability they bring to the table that fits into what you’ve already got.

“A training ground should be a learning environment and that growth mindset is important.”

He added: “No player you ever buy is perfect, but what you are looking for is somebody who you think you can develop.

“Especially at a club like Brentford, you are never going to get the finished player; you are getting someone you think you can develop and get slightly better.

“They need to have that humility and open-mindedness to want to develop themselves because you can’t force development on them. They need to fundamentally own their development.”

Giles was equally clear when he was asked if there was ever a time when raw talent could simply outweigh a player’s fit within the group.

“No,” he stated. “For example, had [Christian Eriksen] been, in some sense, a bad character you should resist all temptation to bring them in. It would be a disaster.

“When you recruit a player, often it’ll be an analysis of their character. Sometimes it is a bit too binary, they are either a great character or not a great character.

“What I’ve learned is that most people are never like that, they sit in this grey area of having their faults and strengths.

“Often those not great character traits are manageable, or you can work around them if you understand that person.”

After a 13th-placed finish in the Premier League last campaign, Thomas Frank’s Bees head into the final seven games of this season ninth in the top flight.

Giles understands that success will bring about interest in some of Brentford’s key players, something the club is acutely aware has its pitfalls.

“At some point, the bigger clubs will come and try to cherry-pick some of these players,” the Bees director of football admitted.

“That will provide challenges about how we navigate those changes because that hasn’t happened to us yet in the Premier League.

“How do we evolve the club and get through to the next phase of our development, keeping some of our fundamental principles in place, but also being able to replace some very good players with players who with eventually be as good?

“How do you do it without alienating some of the players who got you there in the first place?

“It would be very easy to suddenly throw a lot more money at players, but you have to be very aware of the challenge of having four or five very good players who got us there turning around and saying, ‘Hang on, we are the ones who got us there, why aren’t we being rewarded with the big contracts? Why are you throwing this money in the belief that this new star player can take us to the next level?’

“If that player doesn’t share that same work ethic, that same humility, that same desire to improve, and the rest of the players find themselves doing a lot of his running for him, that’s where you find the whole culture and environment will collapse in on itself and you’ll find some bigger challenges.”

Following the success of recent years, Giles ended by looking forward to what more can be achieved.

“I don’t think you can sit here and say that 'being where we are now is special enough',” he said.

“As soon as you do that, that’s where we’ll start to fall backwards; you always have to aspire to the next level.

“I’m not really a dreamer, but my job is to make it happen. There’s certainly a space within football for the big dream.

“You have to have people who are dreamers and have pragmatic people who can actually deliver it.”