Arsenal: Thomas Tuchel might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back
By Josh Sippie
Arsenal look to be raiding the entirety of Borussia Dortmund, but is the recent link to Thomas Tuchel the one step too many? Methinks so.
I understand why Arsenal would be so interested in signing everything Sven Mislintat has ever done. Borussia Dortmund had a fantastic set-up, their only flaw was that they couldn’t hold onto everyone. They weren’t a big enough club.
That’s where I think the Gunners are getting off. They are trying to put back together all the pieces that made Dortmund great, and would have made them even greater had they been able to hold it all together as the Gunners plan on doing.
Filching Sven Mislintat was step No. 1. Dortmund had been blessed with his diamond eye for years, but the problem, as mentioned, was that they could never hold onto those products. The Gunners can.
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Reuniting Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Henrikh Mkhitaryan was step No. 2. They found immense success together and can continue right where they left off at a club that suddenly has the financial clout to do so.
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Right there, with these two steps, I felt like enough was enough. Dortmund had a great thing going, but recreating the entire thing at the Emirates felt a bit like overkill. Maybe Ousmane Dembele would be step No. 3 and I’d still be okay with it.
But Thomas Tuchel too? That may be a bit too much. In fact, I’m pretty certain it is. Dortmund failed to maintain traction for a reason. Or rather, for multiple reasons. There was a lot of drama at the club, and, naturally, a lot of speculation as to where that drama was coming from. Tuchel, Aubameyang and Mislintat have all been touted as part of the problem.
I do believe that Tuchel is a qualified manager, but how much of Dortmund do we want to recreate before we run the risk of falling down the same trapdoor they fell down themselves?
I like the idea of what Tuchel is as a manager more than I like who he is. As in, I like the idea of an up-and-coming young manager who doesn’t have as illustrious of a resume and looks set to settle into Arsenal for the long haul. I don’t like that it’s Tuchel for the reasons mentioned. Eventually, you can go too far into recreating something that has previously failed.
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The idea of picking up the pieces of what looked like such a promising experiment is admirable, but only on a piece-by-piece basis. Not on a “let’s do everything they did” basis.