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Stoke City need to find some backbone in key summer transfer mission

Mike Pejic reckons that the best Stoke City teams have always featured a strong and ruthless centre-half

There’s an old saying in football about what you want if you’re putting together a balanced team – stop ‘em, create ‘em, finish ‘em.

Stoke put a tick against the second of those with their first signing of the summer, Sorba Thomas. They’ll put a tick against the first by bringing in Maksym Talovierov and it would be nice if Mark Robins and Jon Walters can quickly put a tick next to the third as well.

They were three areas for improvements from 2024/25, three priorities to address down the spine of the team in this summer window.

Robins was able to have a good look at what he had inside the changing room in the second half of last season and he knows who he can trust and what areas he has to bring in new blood to get it right. Get that backbone sorted.

Year after year I end up coming around to the same point about the importance of the spine of the team. Everything is set from that. That’s what will give you consistency in performances and will earn you respect from your own supporters and the football world at large.

We have to come up trumps in those key positions to make sure we consolidate as a club and have genuine faith that we’re going in the right direction. Never mind talking about the top six or chasing the moon, just get things straight and go from there.

We haven’t had a solid foundation for a while and it leaves you going into every match hoping for a result rather than expecting one. You want to go into home games in particular knowing that you’re going to win before you kick a ball. You want that feeling in your guts.

I want Stoke to get into a position when we don’t end a season with fans leaving the stadium thinking we need 10 new players. That doesn’t seem like too much to ask!

I’ve only seen Talovierov in a couple of matches on television and the Championship highlights shows. He looked good but of course you can only judge so much from highlights and I’m looking forward to seeing him in the flesh.

Stoke fans like players who are brave, whether that’s physically or as a winger or a forward who is prepared to take risks and take the game to his opponent. Go at them, get on the front foot and leave your rival on the floor, whether he’s fallen over dizzy or been flattened.

And the best Stoke sides have always had a strong, ruthless centre-back. I can go back to watching Maurice Setters – and then I had to play practice matches against him. You grow up quickly – and I’ll never forget the value that these kinds of fellas bring to training as well as matches. Everything has to be sharper.

We had Bluto and Smithy, Alan Bloor and Denis Smith, and we had Robert Huth in the modern age. These are the kind of tough as teak man mountains that you want on your team when you’re standing in the tunnel and when you cross that white line.

Ben Wilmot is spirited at centre-half but I always think he needs a strong, tall partner. That’s what they’re getting and it’s important that partnership functions well.

I will repeat myself again but it always comes down to individuals you can trust to be consistent in terms of availability and performance, the partnerships they form and then units that are built from successful partnerships. That’s how you gradually build a team that is greater than the sum of its parts. Each part has to be right and complement the rest.

I have been looking forward to watching the women’s European Championships but then almost reached for the remote during a couple of the early games.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing as a goalkeeper passed it a yard to the centre-back to get it passed back as the opposition retreated to the half-way line. Urgh, the disease is still spreading. What a waste of everyone’s time.

When you get the ball, think forward, look forward, move forward. You want to score goals, don’t you? This trend that has infected too many modern coaches and players that possession is the most important thing is in danger of making the sport tiresome.