Brentford ditched their Academy and now operate a system whereby that B team you mention comprises of top teams cast offs or young players bought for pretty small fees. As far as I know, the B team are not in any league and don't play competitive matches, but the object of the exercise is to eventually produce a lot more first team players than you get coming through from the Development/under 23 system at other clubs - presumably they were confident that they would be able to prove this shortly, hence the decision to sell three first teamers yesterday and not replace them.
I wouldn't like it if City went for a similar approach, but I can see that there is a logic to Brentford's thinking - it just all seems a bit soulless to me.
On the subject of stats, I see that while we are now a fair distance ahead in the Championship's shots on target table, we are still behind Millwall and Brentford (who have had ninety two, more than any one else in the division) in the shots at goal figures. Brentford, with thirty two are second to our thirty seven, when it comes to actually working the keeper, so I would have thought the attitude at such a stats based club would be that they will soon be climbing the table because their current position is a statistical anomaly.
http://www.footstats.co.uk/index.cfm?task=league_shots