Brentford owner shares regret at failing to sign Arsenal and Man City duo for combined £4m

Brentford owner Matthew Benham has been speaking at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston, Massachusetts

Brentford owner Matthew Benham has revealed his regret at failing to land Arsenal and England international Eberechi Eze in a £4million transfer.

Benham, who was speaking at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston, also revealed the Bees came close to landing Manchester City forward Omar Marmoush and Chelsea winger Mykhailo Mudryk.

He explained when pushed on the club's notable transfer near-misses: "There's always going to be ones you regret."I was saying before that we could have signed Eze for £4m I think in 2019. We could also have signed Marmoush on a free about three years ago.

"[We could have signed both] for about £4m combined. The summer we got promoted to the Premier League, there was actually two players that scouted amazingly, amazingly well.

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"One was Mudryk which was maybe a bit complicated if we signed, although we were quite close to signing him for a low fee, for about €20m. Eventually, he went for more like €80m though he's currently serving a drug ban.

"Then Michael Olise, his scouting was unbelievable, out of this world but we just got promoted and we weren't used to the crazy agent fees in the Premier League at the time.

"The agent fee for that one was so insanely high that we stepped away, even though there was part of us thinking 'well, if you combine the agent fee and the transfer fee, it's kind of not too bad,' but the agent fee on its own was just so insane that we stepped away. There's always going to be ones you miss out on."

Brentford's interest in Eze, who joined Arsenal in a £67.5m deal from Crystal Palace last summer, dates back to his time with west London rivals Queens Park Rangers.

Meanwhile, Manchester City's Egypt international attacker Marmoush joined Eintracht Frankfurt on a free transfer from Wolfsburg during the summer of 2023.

The Bees were also courting Mudryk when he rose to prominence at Shakhtar Donetsk and they saw two bids, worth in the region of £12m and £15m, rejected for the Ukrainian in January 2022 before he joined Chelsea for £88.5m just one year later.

Mudryk remains suspended and has not featured for the Blues since November 2024 when he scored a Conference League victory against Heidenheim in Germany.