The Chief Executive Officer of Arsenal Football club, Ivan Gazidis was more than happy to fully explain how the decision to hire Unai Emery came about.
The 46-year-old is the man who has replaced Arsene Wenger at Arsenal after 22 years and while many thought that former player Mikel Arteta would be picked, Gazidis explained that Emery had been in the works for a while.
Speaking at the Press conference, Gazidis also revealed that the vote to pick Emery was unanimous and was done in secret.
“All the way going through the process, Raul and I and Sven spoke to each other as little as possible because we didn’t want to pollute each other’s viewpoints from the discussions we had had,” Gazidis said
“We wanted to come to the discussion fresh when we had been through all eight of the final candidates.
“We narrowed it down to three. We spent an entire day discussing among those three. At the end of the day, three of us all wrote on a piece of paper, one, two, three, and put them into the middle of the table.
“And the choices were all, one, two, three, the same. And Unai was at the top of all of our lists.”
Gazidis stated that even though instant success was not expected from Emery, he did want improvement.
“I think we need to understand that success isn’t instant. So, this is going to be a process. Day after day, you try to improve a little bit, you try to move forward. That’s what we have to do.
“We have to work hard, we have to work well together. And take this step by step by step.”