By Sunshine
May 9 2005

It’s mental exercise time, again (no, I don’t mean running around like a lunatic), I mean taking a moment to try and analyse something. Today’s topic is the core of a team. Very few teams have eleven brilliant players. Not even the latest World Cup winning Brazilian team had a full complement of stars (Roque Junior in defence, anyone?). Nope, even the majority of successful teams have a percentage of ‘fodder’ who raise their game because the rest of the team are doing well.

Take Chelsea, for example. They have a core of excellent players around which the rest of the team is built. Their main strengths are their midfield engine room of Lampard and Makelele, their keeper Cech and the central defensive pairing of Terry plus one of Gallas or Carvalho. The flair is added by either Duff or Robben, both of which are more than capable of turning on a show (when they’re not on the sidelines through injury). The rest, however, are players you’ll find in many squads.

AFC have excellent players in the shape of Henry, Vieira, Pires and Cole. The rest fit well into a successful system that the players know backwards, but I doubt they’d make much of a difference at other clubs. In fact, in European football, where the competition gets stiffer in later rounds, AFC have never achieved anything of note under Wenger.

Man U, too, have an array of stars in Giggs, Ronaldo, Keane, Scholes, Rooney, Ferdinand and Van Nistelrooy, but the rest of the players let the side down quite badly.

The thing is, these sides are successful because of their core players, not because of the supporting actors. The supporting actors raise their game (or don’t in the case of Man U this season), but it’s only down to the presence of the star players that they are capable of doing so.

Let’s see how well AFC fare once Bergkamp, Pires, Vieira and Henry end their connection with them. Then we’ll see how well the likes of Reyes (if he’s still there), Van Persie and Fabregas manage. They look good in a well-oiled machine, but will they have the quality and the drive to lead the team to success once the responsibility is on their shoulders and they’re not just filling in during the absence of their ‘mentors’?

Football is cyclical and those who don’t think so are kidding themselves.

Anyway, back to the point. The point is who are Spurs’ core players and are they good enough?
I’m not talking five years down the line, when some of Arnesen’s ‘baby-buys’ come good, but now.

Defoe, King, Robinson, our three England squad players are all up to the task, else they wouldn’t be uppermost in Eriksson’s thoughts. I also think that Naybet, albeit aging and losing his pace, is also a performer of undoubted quality. The organisation, experience and leadership that he has brought to the side have been invaluable.

Unfortunately, that’s it. We have no other star performers. What we do have, compared to many other squads, are a number of potentially excellent players, but potential wins nothing.

If Carrick can get some consistency, then he’ll be a leading playmaker. If Davis can regain his pre-injury form, then he’ll be an effective defensive midfielder. If Kanouté can be motivated for most games, then he’d be one of the most useful strikers in the Premiership. If Reid can lay off the pies, then he can become one hell of a good left winger. If Davies can avoid any more injuries, then he might recapture the form that had him rated as a future £10m player…and so on, and so forth.

Too many ‘if’s.

When Jol speaks, you can be sure he is echoing Arnesen’s thoughts and vice versa. Well, Jol has spoken and he has highlighted that our problems lie in midfield. We don’t produce enough from midfield, not enough ammunition (quality service) for our forwards and not enough of a threat on the opposition keeper (goals from midfield). Take away the rookie players (Ziegler and Marney) and the mainstays in the middle of the park have managed one goal this season, one.

It is little wonder that we are having difficulty in managing to break out of mid-table mediocrity this season. There is no hiding the fact that we are missing the contribution that Lampard (or even Cole or Robben) gives Chelsea, Scholes (Giggs or Ronaldo) gives Man U and Pires (Ljungberg or Bergkamp) gives AFC.

What we can deduce from the statistics and Jol’s words is that the midfield needs addressing in the next transfer window. Reid, Carrick and Davis are all recent acquisitions. Davis has been out for almost the entire campaign, Carrick has found favour with Jol, whilst Reid is adjusting to making the step up from Championship football. All clues point to competition for (or replacement of) Davies. Here we have a player who, despite being with the club for five years and supposedly being a clinical finisher, hasn’t (I’m lead to believe) scored a goal for the club in 43 outings. His plight is starting to become ‘Freund-like’, only Freund wasn’t touted as an attacking midfielder.

Whatever happens, Arnesen needs to draft in a couple of ready-to-go quality, core players, at least one of which needs to be a midfielder with an eye for goal and capable of being a thorn in the side of any team. Such players don’t come cheap and it is where the lion’s share of whatever transfer budget he has at his disposal should be channelled. If we can bring in this sort of player, Arnesen can continue to build for the future as much as he likes in relative tranquillity. If we ‘only’ add more youngsters to the squad, then no one next term should expect progress in line with what the club have achieved this year.

And that would be a pity.