Brentford Technical Director Lee Dykes said Aaron Hickey has been a player that we have been watching and aware of for many years.

We completed the signing of the Scotland international defender at the end of last week. He joined from Bologna for an undisclosed fee and signed a four-year contract.

“Aaron was basically identified because he was a very young player playing senior select football [for Hearts, aged 16] and he was identified as a player of interest,” Lee, who also described him as “effectively two players in one”, told The Times.

“At the time we didn’t really have the gap for him, and we did a lot of work on him in the 2019/20 year, but we didn’t have the gap, but we kept that work going along. When he made the move to Italy that was looked upon as a credit to him, as it’s a difficult move.”

Aaron grew up in Glasgow and spent his youth career with both Celtic and Heart of Midlothian. It was with Hearts that he turned professional and made his debut in the Scottish Premiership when he was 16. His second start, and third appearance, for Hearts was in the Scottish Cup Final against Celtic in 2019, days before his 17th birthday.

He moved to Bologna after one full season with Hearts, when he was 18, and played 11 games in Serie A in a 2020/21 campaign interrupted by injury. Aaron was a regular for Bologna last term, playing in 36 of their 38 games and scoring five goals. He made his debut for Scotland earlier this year and played for his country in the FIFA World Cup 2022 qualifying Play-Off match against Ukraine last month as a right wing back. He has also played on the left side for both club and country in his career so far.

Get to know Aaron Hickey

“He’s obviously very fit, lots of energy, grown in size since he’s gone to Italy, grown in how he reads the game in a defensive side,” Dykes said. “He’s two footed, can score goals, can assist goals. It’s always good to get a young player into Brentford, because that is what the philosophy stands for — we want to get young hungry players into our First Team, and we want them to do well.

“Aaron has achieved so much up to this point, and he has so much to achieve going forward. Given what I’ve seen, I think everyone should be excited because he’s a tremendous young player.

“We know his strengths and his development areas and it’s important to still continue to develop both so that he reaches his maximum potential, hopefully whilst at Brentford, but then has the opportunity to go to bigger levels of football.

“Players at Brentford get a lot of resource and I can understand why players do choose Brentford; they know they’re going to get worked and they’re going go into so much detail on their individual development, their strength areas, their development areas and at Brentford I think you can develop that potential quickly.”