A new book has claimed that Mikel Arteta was only one of at least eight serious options Arsenal examined when they went looking for a successor to Unai Emery in 2019.<\/p>\n
The club were in an unusual position after spending 22 years with one manager, then needing a second permanent appointment in less than 18 months. According to The Telegraph\u2019s Sam Dean in Arsenal: The Inside Story of Arsenal\u2019s Rebirth Under Mikel Arteta, then sporting director Edu Gaspar cast a notably wide net.<\/p>\n
Arteta, who had never managed before, was viewed at first as sitting \u201ccloser to the lower end\u201d of the list. His case rested on a playing career that had taken him to north London and on the experience he had built as Pep Guardiola\u2019s assistant at Manchester City.<\/p>\n
Still, Arteta had already been thinking about coaching since the age of 26, when a torn ACL at Everton forced him to look at the game differently. Edu said the former midfielder made a striking impression when he came to his home.<\/p>\n
\u201cI spoke to him about the squad, the culture, the strategy and everything that I had thought in my six months inside the club,\u201d Edu told Dean. \u201cAnd Mikel was extremely prepared for the conversation. He was prepared to such a level that it felt like he was inside the club already. He presented and spoke about everything. Everything.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was extremely impressive, the way he presented his strategy, the way he was seeing the club and also the excitement he had to start the project. I was like: \u2018Wow, this guy is prepared\u2014to the next level.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The report also says Mauricio Pochettino entered \u201cserious conversations\u201d shortly after leaving Tottenham Hotspur, while Carlo Ancelotti was available before later taking the Everton job and then returning to Real Madrid, where he won more major honours. Patrick Vieira, who already had managerial experience, was another name considered before eventually landing Premier League work elsewhere.<\/p>\n
Roberto Mart\u00ednez, then with Belgium, and V\u00edtor Pereira, who was coaching in China, were also among the broader search. Julian Nagelsmann was highly regarded at the time, while Massimiliano Allegri featured in the final part of the process, revealing his distance from modern data tools in an interview the day before Arteta was officially appointed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A new book says Arsenal examined a wide managerial field before choosing Arteta in 2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21841,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192],"tags":[1162,59,182],"class_list":["post-21842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","tag-analytics","tag-featured","tag-transfers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}