This article was originally published as part of UTAS’ weekly column in the Cambridge Independent. You can find it online here and in print in your nearest Cambridgeshire newsagent every Wednesday, or Coconut Tier members can read the piece below.
Good football teams are so often defined by the quality of their spine. Match-saving goalkeepers, leaders at centre half, engine room central midfielders, and goal-getting strikers. It might be a simplistic way to put it, but without quality all along their backbone teams will really struggle to find consistency – which in turn equals success.
Going into the summer, we knew that last season’s promotion-winning squad needed some reinforcements. At centre back, the departures of club captain Michael Morrison and young star Mamadou Jobe forced our hand. Up front, a new focal point was needed. But in central midfield, the challenge was slightly different – it was more a case of adding some quality rather than quantity to help upgrade the department for the bigger challenges a new division would throw at us.
Of the five options available to us at the time of writing, four of them were with the U’s last year: Dom Ball, Shane McLoughlin, Pelly Ruddock Mpanzu, and George Hoddle, with just Korey Smith departing and being replaced by the arrival of Owen Moxon on loan. All five have good characteristics to be excited about. It feels like a strong unit for Harris to pick from.
But with the recent drop off, are we seeing a problem with the possible combinations? We’ve struggled for control in games and each game has presented periods where we’ve felt unable to get a grip of the game. Might that be because Harris is struggling to find his preferred partnership in central midfield?
