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When it comes to leading from the front with gender equality, Brentford FC is right up there as a model of how football clubs can give women a platform to excel.

In 2020, having one female on the board of a football club is no longer unique with 11 female directors among the Premier League's 20 teams, and five among the 24 Championship sides.

One of those 24, Monique Choudhuri, also happens to be a board member for Women in Football along with her role as a non-executive director at Brentford.

Instigated by owner Matthew Benham, Brentford use data and science-led recruitment both on the pitch with the buying and selling of players, but also off it with staff recruitment.

Lorna Falconer, head of football operations for the Championship club, is one of the few black women in a senior position in the men's professional game. She is also one of eight women in a senior position at Brentford, where 22 per cent of its staff are female.

"We come from the basis that human decision-making is flawed and that we all have bias," Monique, a leadership, recruitment and inclusion expert, told Alistair Magowan of BBC Sport.

"Because we're so big at using data to inform our decisions on how we pick players, we started to see if we could use data to challenge our own assumptions in the way we ran the club.

"If you have many people from many different backgrounds around the table you are going to get a better competitive advantage because you're thinking about things from a different point of view.

"If you're all the same person, all thinking the same, guess what? You're going to wake up tomorrow and you're going to all think the same again."

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