Is Thomas Tuchel’s Tinkerman Approach a Hindrance to Borussia Dortmund?

A deserved, but perhaps a bit unlucky, 2-1 defeat at the hands of Eintracht Frankfurt on Matchday 12 of the 2016/17 Bundesliga season seems to have heralded the start of open season on Borussia Dortmund head coach Thomas Tuchel.

Internet message boards and social media are one thing, but even respected voices close to the club from the Ruhr valley have set their sights on the 43-year-old.

Thomas Hennecke theorised in Monday’s edition of German sport magazine Kicker that the coach could lose the dressing room after Tuchel laid into his team in his post-match press conference. With that, the writer continued, he deflected criticism from himself.

Matthias Dersch of local paper Ruhr Nachrichten (link in German) took the same line, demanding Tuchel start with his own shortcomings instead of blasting his players.

Even the club’s official website described the coach’s analysis of the game as “brief, yet brutal.” It quoted him saying: “Our performance as a whole was deficient. It began during training this week, and today it was a performance from the first to the last minute that merited no points.”

Harsh words, of course, but no one who watched the game will find much with which to disagree. The Black and Yellows looked lethargic, lackadaisical and made inexcusable errors leading to a deserved defeat, despite having the chances to come away with at least one point and being denied a blatant penalty.

Dortmund-based Dersch’s immediate reaction to the Frankfurt match was to question Tuchel’s personnel decisions, via Twitter (link in German), focusing mostly on the heavy rotation between games.

Freddie Rockenhaus of Suddeutsche Zeitung (link in German), perhaps the writer closest to the club’s decision-makers, adopted a similar stance, arguing the changes made compared to the 8-4 win over Legia Warsaw in the Champions League were to blame for the defeat against the Hessians.

One could point out that suggestion was aided by the fact Ousmane Dembele was far and away the team’s best player coming off the bench against Frankfurt after impressing against Legia in midweek. On the other hand, who’s to say that the Frenchman did not benefit from tiring opponents towards the end of the game?

While it is true that Tuchel made an enormous amount of changes from Saturday to Wednesday to Saturday, it has to be noted that the team that won a famous victory over Bayern Munich on Matchday 11 was only changed in two spots compared to the one which took on Frankfurt and failed miserably.

One of those changes was forced by injury, as Roman Weidenfeller has taken over from Roman Burki in goal after the Swiss broke his hand against the Bavarians. So essentially, there was one change from the Bayern match.

Using the wacky night against Legia as a measuring stick for anything seems an ill-advised strategy, seeing as the Poles were hardly a competitive opponent.

Being part of a team that conceded four goals against opposition that, with all due respect, has no business competing in European football’s premier competition hardly made for a great application to start the much tougher Bundesliga match, one would think.

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