Brentford Youth Team Manager Jeremy Steele said the Club’s young players responded well to his arrival in the middle of the season.

Jeremy, who had previously worked at Chelsea, Portsmouth and Stoke City, took over as Youth Team Manager in November.

At that point Brentford’s Under-18 side had just two points from ten games in the Under-18 Professional Development League Two South and had FA Youth Cup wins over Barnet and Brentwood Town.

They won three of the ten games after his arrival and picked up ten points in total.

Jeremy said he spoke to Academy Director Ose Aibangee and Development Squad Manager Jon De Souza when he arrived and tried to inject confidence in to the players.

Speaking to Bees Player last week, Jeremy said results weren’t all important but he was pleased with the boost in confidence from winning games in the second half of the campaign.

“Although this is a development environment, and we want to produce players for the First Team, the boys were a little bit down with the results they had got,” said Jeremy, talking about his arrival at the Club.

“The first thing I did was talk to Ose and Jon about how we could change that.

“We wanted to change the environment to lift the boys, get their confidence back.

“We concentrated on discipline and work rate and achieved that.

“We did well from there on and the players responded well.

“Results aren’t the most important thing in Under-18 football but the boost in results and confidence really helped lift them.

“We could then do some real development work.

“We had to remind them how good they were but they had to work hard.

“Some had forgotten that.”

Jeremy said Brentford’s results since Christmas would have placed them about half way up the Under-18 Professional Development League Two South table and that is roughly where they deserved to be.

He said there was an improvement in performance over his time in charge and as many players would still qualify for the Under-18 side next year, there was more to come.

“We reviewed the performances of the boys since Christmas and we would have been mid-table and rightly so,” he said.

“The boys kicked on a lot.

“Some of the players’ improvements from Christmas were massive.

“The majority of the boys were Under-17 so they will be here next year.

“They need to carry on what they have done; if they stop or regress they will struggle.

“There are a few with a decent chance of kicking on next year, getting something at the end of the season, making and impact at Under-21 level and who knows what the.”

Jeremy said he had a good base to kick on for the 2013/14 season.

The Bees are likely to be competing against similar teams next season to this season and Jeremy said they had proved they were a match for them, taking four points from Swansea City and pushing Charlton Athletic close.

He added there was the quality to compete against the top academies in the country.

“There are some clubs that are better than others, some who have a reputation of being better than others that aren’t,” said Jeremy.

“We have come across a range of teams.

“We were unlucky to draw with Swansea in a ridiculous game that ended 5-5 and then beat them.

“They are a Premier League football club.

“There are clubs with established academies that have been producing players for a while, like Charlton.

“We were excellent against Charlton when we played them here.

“I also think we will compete against Category One teams when we arrange games against them.

“Where we are now is a good base.”

An end-of-season interview with Jeremy Steele was broadcast in three parts – Bees Player subscribers can see it here, here and here.