Who should replace Arsène Wenger? Part 4 — Thomas Tuchel
On April 20th 2018, Arsène Wenger announced that this would be his last season as Arsenal manager, after 22 years at the club. It was a pretty emotional day and football fans and players emerged to give respect and gratitude to the manager.
Make sure you’ve read the first three parts. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.
Thomas Tuchel
Tuchel is a 44 year old German manager. He followed a similar path to Jürgen Klopp, managing Mainz, before moving to Dortmund. Maybe his next step is to England also. He had a good stint at Dortmund and is a young manager favoured by a lot of Arsenal fans to take over.
Firstly, his ELO. He was at Mainz for a good period of time, managing 182 matches and winning 72. He was tasked with sustaining the newly promoted club in the Bundesliga, which he did successfully. As you can see Mainz improved gradually and sustainably during his time there. The change wasn’t instant but was successful. The growth at Mainz was slow and plateaued a bit, partly due to lack of resources.
Tuchel moved to Dortmund, taking over a side with a similar ELO to Arsenal’s now. Again, gradual, sustainable growth occurred and their ELO rose a good amount.
Tuchel is tactically flexible and a very detailed coach. At Mainz his less technical side was able to counter press very well. Once he made the step up to Dortmund, he had more technically gifted players at his disposal. Therefore, he adopted more of a positional play, focused on ball retention.
His Dortmund side played with attacking full backs and a technical midfield which overloaded areas and exploited the numbers. Therefore, I believe that this style of play would be welcomed at Arsenal and I think that a fit Jack Wilshere could possibly be able to thrive in his system, or we’d see his true ability.
It’s clear to see that he puts faith in youth by looking at these two seasons. The best youth players were given a lot of minutes and were key players. And other young players were still given game time and were rotated into the squad. Players like Julian Weigl were key to his Dortmund side, and Geis and Karius at Mainz.
I like Thomas Tuchel a lot and is a great candidate take become Arsenal’s Head Coach. But, there is one issue. As mentioned in part 1, Arsenal hired Sven Mislintat as Head of Recruitment. Mislintat and Tuchel fell out when they worked together at Dortmund and was a key reason in Mislintat deciding to leave.
If the two main cogs in the new Arsenal machine couldn’t work in harmony, then it would be a torrid time at the club and could result in either leaving and an unsuccessful squad.
Tuchel passes all the benchmarks, but his success would depend on how he could work with Mislintat. If they can forget past troubles and work together then Arsenal could thrive under their control.
Tuchel is also being heavily linked with the PSG job, so Arsenal will face serious competition if they want to get the German.
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