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Who Should Replace Arsene Wenger?

By @NickBurgess92

Arsene Wenger

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The veteran manager of Arsenal is getting toward the twilight of his career. After a distinguished career at the Emirates and Highbury, Wenger appears to be coming toward the end of his tenure, with the plateau of the team seemingly fourth place in the Premier League table.

So, who should replace the venerable Frenchman? Who has the skill and the know-how to take one of the biggest clubs in world football and come out victorious? These is seemingly only one choice this job: Jurgen Klopp.

Klopp has become the darling of the fooballing world after exploding onto the stage at the 2012 Champions League, in which his underdog Borussia Dortmund team made it past the likes of Real Madrid CF to make it to the final against Bayern Munich, where they eventually fell. Despite the trip at the final hurdle, making it there was a massive accomplishment for the German and his squad, considering their business and footballing practices.

Dortmund are very much the working class “blue collar” team to Munich’s “Hollywood, white collar” team. They are a club with a rabid fanbase who target good football over good business. With recent management at the top, however, that is changing rapidly. The new practices of selling their superstars to Munich is drawing negative attention to the executives and to Klopp, who is in a difficult situation between business and tactics.

That is why he would be an ideal fit at Arsenal. He works with a shoestring budget, finding grossly underrated players and coaching them into his system. Recent examples include Shinji Kagawa and Henrikh Mkhitaryan after the sale of the mercurial No. 10 Mario Goetze. He has taken these players, in the style of Wenger, from a young age and coached them into a system to play well together, all the while saving the club money and posting results.

He also trains his players to play attractive football. That has long been a mainstay with the Gunners, with their “triangle” method of play, and Dortmund are very similar. They keep the ball on the ground and their options open, with some very good technical players leading the line and heading up the midfield to find the pass to split the defense apart in the style of Jack Wilshire or Santi Cazorla.

Klopp is currently in the hot seat at Dortmund after his team have just four points after the last 10 games in league play, but have been sensational in the Champions League, an area where Arsenal have struggled in recent years. This means that Klopp may be easier to nab from Germany than first thought.

Klopp ticks all the boxes Arsenal have. He is efficient, exciting, revolutionary and, in many ways, similar to Wenger. As soon as the Frenchman decides to hang up his puffy coat, the German should be next in line to replace him at the great north London club.

Nick Burgess is a soccer columnist for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @NickBurgess92, “Like” him on Facebook and connect with him on Google.

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