Which centre-back pairing would you go with?

We’ve talked about the central defenders at the club a lot in recent times, and they’ve popped up again today with Ron Vlaar discussing how he feels his partnership with Ciaran Clark is going (quotes appeared in the Express and Star):

“It is getting better and better but we still need to improve,”

“We talk about it a lot together and I think everybody has to improve. If you believe you can then you can do it every day. It is a long way but we have to keep it up and move forward.

“The partnership with Ciaran is good but I think we have to better it, for the team and for ourselves. I think we can work on that every day and that is what we are doing.

“Communication can always be better and we talk to each other a lot about moments in the game, situations that have happened and what can happen in future. We always try to improve.”

“We didn’t play that bad against Tottenham and we actually had some control in the game but we have to score and try and get clean sheets.

“It is a disappointment because of the loss but we have to look forward to the next game which is now two weeks because of the international calendar. We have to change that luck and work hard for it.”

It’s pretty clear that the player sees room for improvement in the partnership, and you can certainly see that at times in the way they play. Clark is still relatively untested, at least week in and week out, and previously played a lot of his football at Villa further up the field. It’s still early days in their partnership, and at times it looks like it has potential to work really well. I wrote a few days ago how I’d keep him in for the time being, even when Dunne returns and I stick by that at the moment.

So when Dunne returns, we have the four following choices….Vlaar, Dunne, Clark and Baker. Not too bad on the face of it, and all four have differing skills and qualities. As already mentioned I’d go with Vlaar and Clark for now, because much like the manager, we should look longer term, and Clark has the talent to start for many years to come. That’s not to say I don’t rate the others, and think they could all do a good job, but at the minute that’s my choice.

How about you folk? Baker got some love the other day in a separate post in the comments, and Dunne on his day can still be a top top player. Much like with the rest of the squad, it’s nice to have some real options and some real depth.

UTV.