Stoke City are at a stage where they need to keep landing increasingly talented players to stay relevant. Who better to accomplish that then Axel Witsel?
A lot of Premier League clubs are reaching the same point. They have finally started to land some international stars, but now they need to keep them and keep adding in order to maintain relevance. Namely, I am speaking of West Ham and Stoke City.
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I covered West Ham’s situation yesterday, so Stoke City is my focus today.
The Potter’s pulled off a shock transfer when they landed Xherdan Shaqiri. The Swiss winger was a bit of an enigma, but he is still getting used to life in England. It’s not easy. Anything that takes Mesut Ozil 18 months to accomplish cannot be easy.
But Shaqiri isn’t the first time that Stoke have landed some pretty quality talents. Marko Arnautovic and Bojan also fit into that category and these three form the base of the Stoke City attack.
It is an attack that showed tremendous promise last year, but also tremendous let down. Stoke was just a weird, unpredictable team. They finished ninth in the table, despite threatening for European football throughout the year, but the -14 goal differential betrays the true problem – Consistency.
Consistency is such a hard thing to grasp, but one of the main ways to accomplish it is to have a solid base in the center of the pitch. Having a powerful attack is one thing and having a solid defense is another, but having controlling forces in the middle of the pack give you a boost on both ends and helps to establish control, which is the first step towards that elusive consistency.
Stoke have a very reliable, albeit old, Glenn Whelan holding down the middle of the pitch but, while he is a gritty midfielder, he doesn’t exude a ton of control. Mark Hughes did add Giannelli Imbula, which was a fantastic fit, but Imbula is more of an offensive support than a controlling figure.
When rumors first emerged that Axel Witsel could move to Stoke City, I was skeptical. Witsel was a big name and Stoke is not one of the front runners in England, as the Stoke Sentinel puts it. Plus, Witsel was supposedly going to cost £70m at one point.
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Well, that has since fallen to £30m and perhaps lower. The point is, cost won’t be a problem anymore.
To counter the ‘is Stoke big enough?’ question, I reference what was said earlier in this article. Witsel may be a big name, but he isn’t huge. I would say he is right on par with Shaqiri, Bojan and Arnautovic.
Funny how that works.
It is a position of dire need at Stoke City and it could be the position that starts pushing them towards sustained relevance and not just fleeting glimpses of what could be. Witsel is a controlling figure who knows how to sit back in a base of support for the offense as well as using his size to be a force on defense. And he isn’t against the occasional goal either.
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Witsel would be a massive signing for Stoke City. I would bet that they would finish with a positive goal differential and end up higher than ninth if they can land him and retain who they have.