"We're going to the Premier League!" said Brentford midfielder Josh Dasilva, as he embraced Peter Gilham.

Most would assume that statement came after the Bees' 2-0 Championship play-off final win against Swansea City in May 2021. But, no - it was said almost two years earlier, in the summer of 2019.

More specifically, Dasilva made that prophetic declaration on the club's pre-season tour of Austria upon hearing the news that the west Londoners had just signed Pontus Jansson from Leeds United; one of six special signings that transfer window.

After finishing 11th the season before and having sold Dan Bentley, Ezri Konsa, Yoane Barbet, Romaine Sawyers and Neal Maupay that summer, there may have been some concern from supporters heading into the 2019/20 campaign.

Those five players were all in the top seven for minutes played for the Bees in the Championship the season before they were sold (2018/19), and replacing them felt like an almost impossible task.

But step forward co-directors of football Rasmus Ankersen and Phil Giles and technical director Lee Dykes, who worked together throughout that transfer window, in a period that one of those summer signings, Jansson, has recently said 'changed the club'.

The Brentford captain stated in an interview upon leaving the club this summer: “It was two or three weeks ago, I was sitting in the dressing room and I was looking around me and almost all of the other signings from that summer were sitting next to me.

“I was thinking, ‘All of those players came to a Championship club, nobody knew who they were, and now all of them are part of a top-half Premier League team’.

“It was me, David [Raya], Ethan [Pinnock], Mathias [Jensen], Christian [Norgaard] and Bryan [Mbeumo] - all of us were just sitting in the dressing room at the same time.

“And I just thought, ‘Wow, this is crazy’. That window changed this club but, back then, I didn’t have a clue about any of those players.

“David, I knew a little bit, I played against him when he was at Blackburn. But, the rest, I had no idea who they were! That makes the story even better.”

As Jansson handily listed above, the key incomings that summer were him (signed from Leeds), David Raya (signed from Blackburn), Ethan Pinnock (signed from Barnsley), Mathias Jensen (signed from Celta Vigo), Christian Norgaard (signed from Fiorentina) and Bryan Mbeumo (signed from Troyes).

Mads Roerslev - who made 20 top-flight appearances last term - also joined the club from Copenhagen that summer, but initially went into the club's B team, before progressing into a current member of the first-team squad.

It was a difficult start to the 2019/20 season, with the nine summer signings (Joel Valencia, Dru Yearwood and Dom Thompson were the other three players to sign for the club in that period) taking time to settle in.

The Bees won just three of their first 11 games, and another of those summer additions, Raya, believes it wasn't until three months into that season that the team really start to click.

In his recent My Journey interview, Raya stated: “We didn’t start well that season, I remember. We didn’t properly start ticking until October.

“But, with so many new players, we needed time to bond with each other. Once that happened, from October, we just flew.

“That’s when I thought we’d have the chance to fight for something really, really special.

“We also realised that the work the club did over the summer was now starting to pay off, and it’s paid off ever since then."

It's hard to argue with that statement from Raya.

Just 660 days after the close of that terrific window, Brentford were a Premier League club, with Raya, Jansson, Pinnock, Jensen, Norgaard and Mbeumo (and Roerslev) all in the Bees squad for the play-off final victory over Swansea at Wembley Stadium.

Even four years later, with the west Londoners having just finished ninth in the top flight, those players have been influential in the club's success.

Five of those six were in the top 11 for players with the most minutes for Brentford in the Premier League last season, with Jansson missing out on that list due to injury issues.

When asked if he knew those signings would go on to be key players in the Premier League, head coach Thomas Frank responded: “I would like to say that, of course!"

Discussing that window in more detail, he added: “Pontus was bought as a starter, he was almost bought as a captain from day one.  

“David was our first pick, the one that we really wanted in. We knew that he was really good and we really wanted him.

“Ethan came from Barnsley, we knew there was big potential there. The truth is that he was good, but we also had Julian [Jeanvier]. It was him or Julian that would play, we didn’t know how we’d do that because we had three good centre-backs. 

“We knew [Pinnock] was good but he then just accelerated. There was a hole to fill and we did that with Pontus, then we needed another one and we got Ethan. 

“Mathias was bought as the starter but still had some work to do - he did that.

“I already knew Christian, I’ve coached him for many years. Christian was probably the easiest one, he was our clear, top pick. We were also already on him six months earlier in January.

"I flew out to see most of them. I spoke to Ethan and Pontus a lot over the phone. That was all a lot of work!

“With all of them, we knew that there was a good chance that they could take us to the Premier League.” 

Frank then went on to discuss the club's most expensive signing that summer, Mbeumo.

The Bees boss said he flew to Troyes and met with the now Cameroon international, alongside Ankersen and Dykes, before eventually concluding the deal to bring the then 19-year-old to the club.

And, in an interview with The Athletic in 2021, Dykes further detailed how the move for Mbeumo, who, since moving to England, has scored 41 goals, assisting 36, came about.

The Brentford technical director stated: "This was a very good player. I was certain. I watched him intensely, and from what I saw, I was just sure. I got some of the recruitment team to look, to check, as I always do.

“The club backed me. They wanted structure and process. They wanted to know where a player was coming in and where he could go to.

"Basically, it came to the end of July and we had to get Bryan out of Troyes in a day. There’s no local airport, only a private place. We had to get a private jet into Troyes, do the deal and come back."

And the rest is history. Not just with Mbeumo, but with the whole of that superb sextet.

It's been an eventful few months for certain members of that group, with Jansson leaving the Bees this summer to return to boyhood club Malmo and Raya entering the final year of his contract; whilst Pinnock and Jensen both recently signed new contracts, keeping them at the club until 2027 and 2026, respectively.

And with the 2022 transfer window now open, a summer even half as good as that one in 2019 will surely see more success for Brentford over the coming years.