You can just picture the scene, can’t you? Six games into the new Premier League campaign, West Ham sitting third after an unbeaten start under David Moyes’ continental successor, Tom Skinner as a studio guest on the talkSPORT breakfast show screaming the words ‘Tommy Tooch’s got us blowin’ bubbles’ again and again at Alan Brazil’s stunned puce face.
This is the future they want for us, the plotters and the schemers at the London Stadium. Who can really blame them? With each passing report, it feels more and more likely that David Moyes will shuffle his way out of the exit door this summer. Some will see that as a cruel reward for the work that he has done during his second stint in East London. Others will believe that it is a necessary evil to facilitate the continued progression of a club who continue to lurk on the periphery of European qualification.
Whichever stance you take, it feels like a creeping inevitability that West Ham will be in the market for a new manager before the summer is through. And that is where Thomas Tuchel enters the conversation.
It is no great secret that the German will be leaving Bayern Munich at the end of the campaign. An unthinkable fumbling of the Bundesliga title may well be atoned for by a Champions League trophy, but even then it would appear that both the club and Tuchel himself are ready for a change. And while the assumption would be that the 50-year-old might end up at some well-trodden halfway house on the merry-go-round of traditional continental heavyweights, there are reasons to believe that West Ham could be in with a chance of luring him back to England.
According to talkSPORT, the Hammers’ sporting director Tim Steidten has been ‘actively working’ on a list of potential candidates to succeed Moyes, and just so happens to boast a ‘close relationship’ with Tuchel, who would be supposedly in favour of a return to the Premier League. All of this bodes very, very well at this absurdly early stage.
Because the likelihood is that Tuchel represents the absolute best appointment that a club in the Irons’ position could realistically hope to make. At the time of writing they are eighth in the Premier League, and have just been dumped out of the Europa League by a nemesis both they and the Bayern boss hold in common, Bayer Leverkusen. By contrast, Tuchel has just led his side into the semi-finals of the Champions League, a competition that he has won before, and is widely regarded as the kind of footballing brain who, more often than not, delivers silverware.
To that end, and with the greatest respect to West Ham, his arrival would signify something of a downsizing in personal projects. But that does not mean that the Hammers – with their massive fanbase, impressive stadium, and willingness to spend – don’t have the potential to kick on and become a club who are closer in scope to kind of destination that Tuchel usually opts for. Surely, if anybody can get them there, the German can. It now just remains to be seen whether he can be convinced or not.
