The Importance of the Spine

I've been busy lately and haven't had time to write on anything current, at least in a manner that would do any justice to the topic.

I'm planning on previewing the six teams who will be playing FIFA U-20 group matches here in Ottawa, starting with the Czech Republic. Hopefully I'll have something down by tomorrow.

In the meantime...

The Spine

For those who are football fanatics, more than likely you've heard about the Championship Manager/Football Manager series of PC games. The object of these life-consuming applications is to build and manage virtually any club or nation in football to glory.

One of the principles of building a good team in the virtual worlds of CM/FM is to build your team around the spine. That is, a goalkeeper, center back, central midfielder and a striker. Any quality team will have top-rate players in these positions week in and week out.

For example, Chelsea have Petr Cech, John Terry, Michael Essien and Dider Drogba down the middle of their squad (you could make arguments for different midfield players, which Chelsea have in abundance, but Essien will do for sake of illustration). Any manager, looking at Chelsea's squad list, would pick these players first and build from there.

This theory, as I suppose it is, can be interesting to apply to both transfer moves and speculations surrounding targets for a particular club.

Alan Curbishley has recently been active in the transfer market with West Ham, with both good and bad results. He bought Scott Parker from Newcastle, but was unsuccessful in his 16-million pound exchange deal for Darren Bent. The interesting thing, when looking at the West Ham squad, is that he is trying to shore up the middle of his team, who were nearly relegated.

When you consider that Carlos Tevez will likely be sold this summer and the trio of Bobby Zamora, Carlton Cole and Marlon Harewood didn't exactly set the Premiership afire with their scoring touch, Bent would have been a more than welcome addition.

Likewise, captain Nigel Reo-Coker has expressed his desire to leave the Hammers, prompting Curbs to go out and sign a slightly older and slightly wiser replacement in Parker. With the failure to capture Bent and apparently a bucketful of cash to spend, watch for West Ham to pursue another top-shelf striker this summer.

This same spine concept yields a different conclusion when it comes to another Premier team. Middlesbrough, like West Ham, spent too much time in the bottom half of the table this past season. However, their rookie manager, Gareth Southgate, has different plans that his London counterpart.

Southgate today warned off suitors of his star winger, Stewart Downing. While Downing may well be one of the top players in the squad, Boro need help. They recently lost Mark Viduka to Newcastle on a free transfer and Yakubu has expressed a desire to leave the northeast (possibly back to Portsmouth).

Many of the other keys to the spine of the Boro team, Ugo Ehiogu, George Boateng, Gaizka Mendieta and Mark Schwarzer are all in their thirties and in need of replacement sooner than later.

The sale of both Downing and Yakubu combined with several prudent signings (particularly a central defender) would go much farther than protecting one of your only commodities who will struggle if goals are not kept out, midfield battles are lost and there is nobody to aim a cross at in center of the park.

Similarly, Rafa Benitez summer will hang on his ability to find a center forward who can score 15+ Premier goals in a season. This has proven to be Liverpool's Achilles heel in the recent past and I think that this target will be the difference between challenging for the title in the upcoming season or being a bridesmaid again.

Unfortunately my favourite target for the Reds problem position, Miroslav Klose of Werder Bremen, has expressed his desire to play for Bayern Munich. I haven't seen any suggestion that the Reds were interested or that this might be a good idea, but Klose would have been a good fit. Good in the air, proven scorer in Germany (where players seem to make an easy transition to England), would have been relatively cheap and shows up for big games (see his World Cup record). But what do I know?