The Pivot

It is increasingly becoming the most vital role in modern football – the leader of the engine room, the creator, the play-maker, the pivot. Whatever you want to call it, the defensive midfielder is a common source of team’s creative output; solidarity, long and short passes, combative, an eye for goal and an engine that can support all these qualities. There is a recurring theme that the top teams around the world are now looking to implement a pivot in to their team.
For Chelsea, we are going through a transition of players – take note of the CL Final squad to last seasons’ – out with the old and in with the new (not entirely, I know) but more importantly the season of 2013/14 could very well be Mr. 203’s very last in a blue shirt. If we’re looking to mount a serious title challenge it would be wise – not to replace Frank immediately – but find his apprentice and inadvertently add depth to our squad.
I expect Oriol Romeu to be a part of Mourinho’s plans as much as he was under AVB. Add him to the one we’ve already mentioned as well as Ramires and Mikel and we have a reasonable amount of depth. But the flexibility of David Luiz will be exploited next season – as he was in the second half of last season – however I think, under Mourinho, that he will mature as a center back and that’s where he will be utilised.
The list of holding midfielders we have is long enough, however the quality isn’t there when compared to the biggest clubs in Europe; we have nobody as effective as Schweinsteiger or De Rossi or somebody that possesses the ruggedness like Yaya Toure. Certainly, Frank Lampard’s goal scoring record makes him one of the best offensively-minded holders but in my honest opinion Frank is past his peak and defensively he isn’t the player he was half a decade ago.
So, where do we go? I think we need to add one truly outstanding defensive midfielder and one who isn’t too far behind. One of my picks are rumoured to be coming to The Bridge as part of Jose’s hand luggage: Xabi Alonso. Yes, he isn’t too far behind Frank in terms of age but he and Lampard are the perfect contrast for defensive midfielder, where Frank is box-to-box, Alonso sits and protects the back line and distributes his quality from there. This means Alonso has ‘more to give in his legs’ than a tiring Super Frank may have. However, Alonso may only have two maybe three more seasons to give, but as a short term plan, he still remains – in my opinion – one of the greatest holders of the midfield.

To counter the short term plan, we employ a young engine room worker who has a rather large handful amount of seasons ahead of them. One of the keys to Dortmund’s recent emergence, Ilkay Gundogan. The twenty-two year old has been nothing short of spectacular and is a player I speak very highly of and it hasn’t gone unnoticed as he won his first senior cap for Germany aged just twenty. He has a Bundesliga title to his name as well as a Champions League runner up medal (which is still impressive). This has sparked interest here in England, with Arsenal, and both sides of Manchester looking to add his name to their rosters but Klopp is looking to keep as many players as he can as Dortmund look to be raided this summer with the likes of Mario Gotze already at the Allianz Arena and Lewandowski looking to follow suit.
With the first game of the season just under nine weeks away teams have a while to bolster their squads in order to compete at what is looking to be a highly competitive season not just domestically but England’s clubs want to regain their European power that they had during the latter half of the noughties and the interest in a lot of Spanish and German players is set to make English clubs a larger force than they have this decade.
So let me know what you guys think…. KTBFFH!