This is kind of like my Gol. D. Roger thread but with a different spin on things.
I just want to bust the notion people have about small crews and strong leaders.
It is obvious that a strong leader attracts strong followers. That is the golden rule in sports and many other things. It has also been proven that a strong leader cant get too far with weak followers.
This relates to one piece and the title of pirate crew. When Mi-Hawk told Luffy becoming pirate king is a extremely harder goal than being the best sworsman, I felt and still feel that he meant more than just physical combat.
Being the strongest person in the world, doesnt mean the end all of becoming the king of pirates.
The strongest man can always be killed or overwhelmed by a group of strong men. Whitebeard for example, is the strongest man alive accoriding to some people in the manga. He even tied with Gol D. Roger in a fight. Tied means even or darn close to it. If Gol D. Roger was the king and he died, shouldnt White beard easily be the next pirate king? The answer is no because Pirate king is not something you can achieve with strength alone.
The main reason in my opnion, Roger was able to do the things he did was because of his Pirate crew. Of course Roger was strong, but his real strength came from the people who followed him.
Luffy's dream of Pirate King is not something he can achieve alone. He needs strong and competent people behind him. This also brings down the theory that he is only going to have 10 crewmates. That is absurd to me. We seen that the strawhats were overwelmed by numbers during the buster call. They cant bring down crews like white beards who have over 100 very strong people in his crew.
If it wasnt for the Going Merry, the strawhats would of been finshed. They need a bigger crew in my mind. A small crew is fine if you are just going island to island but there end goal is one piece. Many large strong crews, like whitebeard awaits them.