Unai Emery romped home in a three-horse race among prime candidates Arsenal chief executive Ivan Gazidis has revealed after unveiling the club’s new head coach.

Gazidis, who has been leading the process to appoint a new man to replace Arsene Wenger, admitted Emery beat off two others during the final round.

Emery, who has signed a three-year contract at the Gunners, was initially one name in a list of eight candidates.

However, his passion and eye for detail won over the influential Gazidis, ultimately beating-off Mikel Arteta and another unnamed rival, which is understood to be Julian Nagelsmann.

Gazidis, who led the Europe-wide search for Wenger’s successor along with the club’s head of football relations, Raul Sanllehi, and head of recruitment, Sven Mislintat, said: “We went through a wde-ranging discussion, challenging each other on as much as we could on preconceptions and assumptions we might have had going into the process.

“By the way, 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.

“We wanted to come to the discussion fresh when we had been through all eight of the finalist candidates. We narrowed it down to three. We spent an entire day discussing among those three.”

Gazidis gave an insight into the recruitment process that has gripped English football, adding: “Three of us all wrote on a piece of paper, 1, 2, 3, and put them into the middle of the table.

“And the choices were all 1, 2, 3 the same. And Unai was at the top of all of our lists.”