Michael Kayode

Key strength: Pace and recovery

Overlapping full-back

In a Brentford side sitting 8th in the Premier League yet stumbling through an inconsistent patch (DDLWL), 22-year-old Michael Kayode has become Thomas Frank's most trusted soldier. The Italian right-back has logged a remarkable 40 appearances this season—over 3,250 minutes of relentless English top-flight football—a workload that breaks lesser players but has forged Kayode into an iron man. Sporting the #33 shirt, Kayode operates as the Bees' overlapping outlet on the right, forging productive partnerships with creative spark Mikkel Damsgaard to stretch stubborn defenses. While his modest return of 1 goal and 2 assists undersells his influence, his €40 million market value captures something rarer in modern football: availability. His recovery speed and defensive positioning have become essential weapons in a league that punishes mistakes, though those six yellow cards reveal the tightrope between aggression and discipline he's still learning to walk. For Brentford, Kayode represents the prototype modern full-back—an ever-present, high-mileage operator whose true worth isn't measured in highlight reels, but in the quiet reliability of showing up as fixtures pile up and fatigue claims others.