Phil Giles interview: Wissa departure and summer transfer window round-up | OneFootball

Brentford director of football Phil Giles has provided further context on Yoane Wissa's transfer to fellow Premier League side Newcastle United.

Following a summer of speculation, Wissa completed a move to the Magpies on Deadline Day for an undisclosed fee.

On the same day, Reiss Nelson arrived from Arsenal on a season-long loan to conclude the Bees' summer incomings.

“It’s been an interesting last few days and in fact, an interesting last few weeks,” Giles began.

“The big story is selling Yoane Wissa. He was a fantastic player for us, started off playing wide and evolved to take on the no.9 position and had a brilliant season last year.

“He was a really good, infectious character who was positive around the players and the fans. I personally liked him a lot as well, so there’s nothing but positive things to say about his performances on the pitch for us.

“Transfers are always complicated. There’s always a little bit of emotion, friction and dialogue. That normally stays in house but obviously this one spilled out. It’s not the only one this summer that has spilled out a little bit more into the public domain which is, from my point of view, not ideal.

“Nevertheless, it happened and we had to manage that. For me, fundamentally, when you have to make a decision about transfers, and complicated decisions - decisions which are impactful on the pitch and also off the pitch in terms of the club’s whole overall position - you need to stay focused on what is the right decision for the club, not whether it’s in public or not in public.

“You have got to take the emotions out of it and got to ultimately make the decisions for the club. Every decision I make or we make collectively during a transfer window will strip all of the emotion out of it and focus purely on what is the right decision in this moment in time for the club overall."

Asked whether Wissa's situation has been a difficult one to manage in recent weeks, Giles added: "To some extent, it’s been no more difficult than many other transfer windows personally.

“It maybe just slipped out publicly a little bit more this time than normal, so people got a bit more insight into how things tend to play out.

“All transfer windows are quite complicated. We’re dealing with human beings at the end of the day who have their own career, life, opportunities and dreams to follow, but then against that a pretty hard contractual position which needs to be respected.

“My focus is always on that it has to be the right decision for the club first and foremost before we take any decision.”

Loan deals for Romelle Donovan and Michael Kayode were made permanent, while Jordan Henderson, Caoimhín Kelleher, Antoni Milambo and Dango Ouattara also completed moves to Brentford this summer, the latter for a club-record fee.

Alongside Wissa, Christian Nørgaard and Bryan Mbeumo signed for fellow Premier League clubs while Mark Flekken and Mads Roerslev joined Bayer Leverkusen and Southampton respectively.

“You want to be as proactive as possible, it's always a combination of both," Giles explained.

“At the start of the summer, Mark Flekken left and we replaced him with Caoimhín [Kelleher].

“That was pretty proactive and we had that all lined up, we didn’t want to leave a gap so it was pretty proactive.

“Towards the end of the window when things started to become a bit more active around Yoane’s situation and there was a feeling that maybe his valuation might get met at some point, you start to make sure you have options on the table.

“Reiss coming in for example wasn’t something that, a week ago, was necessarily nailed and planned, but he’s a player who we’ve known for a long, long time.

“That was a bit more of a [case of] how we can make sure that there’s enough depth in the squad, also factoring in that we don’t have a huge number of injuries that we have had in the past.

“Clearly with Yoane leaving, if anything happened to Igor [Thiago] we’d need to adapt, but we’ve done that in the past when Ollie [Watkins] stepped into that role."

Keith Andrews' side go into the first international break of the 2025/26 season with two wins from four outings across the Premier League and Carabao Cup.

Reflecting on Brentford's August on the pitch and assessing the first-team squad for the season ahead, Giles concluded: "If you look at it, we’re stacked with Premier League players and I’m really happy with the depth of the squad.

“A lot of the conversations we had when we reflected back on last year with Keith and the coaching staff was, ‘Where can we see our team improving?’

“Well, we were pretty good offensively and scored a lot of goals, but clearly the defensive end of the pitch was where you’d like to have seen us be a bit stronger and that was an opportunity to improve.

“I think in the first four games we looked pretty solid, organised and didn’t give away huge opportunities. Caoimhín hasn’t been throwing himself around having to make a lot of saves, so from that end of the pitch it’s been pretty positive.

“Offensively, it’ll take time to adapt and gel. I think we can be a bit better there but it’s not helped by two of the front three effectively being new in the team.

“Relationships need to be built, that will take a bit of time, players need to adapt to those positions in the club and the league. I think that provides opportunity as well.

“I see no reason why, as the season unfolds and Keith gets more time with the players and the coaches in general, that we’ll not get better and better at both ends of the pitch and can’t be really successful.”