Arsenal put together 12-man new manager shortlist including Brendan RodgersArsenal are on the search for a new manager after they sacked Unai Emery last week. Brendan Rodgers, Mauricio Pochettino and Mikel Arteta are all in their eye-sightArsenal want to move quickly on a new manager and have put together an exhaustive list of names with the club ready to analyse and assess as many as 12 contenders.
They include the likes of Leicester boss Brendan Rodgers, ex-Spurs boss Mauricio Pochettino and Manchester City coach Mikel Arteta but, even though they are on the list, the likes of Wolves manager Nuno and ex-Juventus boss Max Allegri are not seen as leading candidates.
Pochettino may not be willing to cross the North London divide, Rodgers has a buy-out clause at Leicester but Arsenal fear they may not be able to get him while former chief executive Ivan Gazidis championed Arteta in 2018 and those who opposed him are still at the club.
Arsenal hope to whittle the contenders down to a shortlist of around four or five within the week with technical director Edu, head of football Raul Sanllehi, managing director Vinai Venkatesham and contracts negotiator Huss Fahmy making up the four-strong panel.
But the feeling is that Edu can effectively be king maker as his role will be to define the sort of manager they want and then get their man.
The recommendations of the four man panel will then be taken to owner Stan Kroenke and his son Josh, an Arsenal director, who will then rubber stamp the appointment.
That is unlikely to be Ljungberg as it is still early in his coaching career and he lacks experience but if results improve dramatically then he could at least keep the seat warm.
The Swede took charge of the Gunners' 2-2 draw with Norwich on Sunday - but still thinks qualifying for the Champions League is still a possibility.
When asked whether Arsenal can still make the top four, Ljungberg said: “100 per cent. Like you see, teams drop points here and there, they drop points, we drop points, Spurs, it’s a bit of a crazy league and of course I hope and think that Arsenal can get back to the top four.
“I think when we dominated the game, we had possession, it was not a big problem but we do have a problem on transition and that’s what I’m going to try and fix.
“We want to be a club which has possession and hopefully when we have the ball, the opponents don’t have the ball and they can’t shoot as much.
“Normally we say we try in a pre-season when you have them 5, 6 weeks and can normally implement how you want to play football and it is nice but that is not what I have. I will just try to do small building blocks and try to change things.
“We probably get one and a half sessions again before the next game but that’s football. For me, I just try to make things as simple as possible for the players and hopefully we get better.
“What I saw in the first 30 minutes, the belief and how they went, how we played, that’s good.
"In my opinion, offensively that is good and one thing, when we went 1-0 down it wasn’t players [putting their head down] shaking their head, it was ‘come on guys, we can sort this out.’
“That shows, for me, the belief that they know they are good players and we need to change the negative trend but for us with our run it was a difficult game and the players did well."
https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/arsenal-put-together-12-man-21010927
