Arsenal chief Ivan Gazidis has revealed eight candidates sought the manager's job.

Unai Emery was unveiled at Emirates Stadium on Wednesday, succeeding Arsene Wenger after an exhaustive search which chief executive Gazidis outlined in detail.

“We believe there is no position in world football that is more attractive than Arsenal Football Club and having gone through that process and series of references, and a good deal of analysis, we created a long-list, an eight-person list," he said.

“All of those eight people that we approached, that we targeted, were interested in the position and all of those eight people took part in an extensive, in-person interviews with us and none of them at any stage withdrew their interest - they were interested right until the moment we informed them of our decision.

“We were in a fortunate position in this process to make our first choice and that is what we did. Our first interview was conducted on April 25 and our last interview was conducted on May 15, and we interviewed Unai on May 10 as part of that process.

“We made our recommendation to the board on May 18, and that was a unanimous recommendation by the three of us, and the formal recommendation to the board was supported by a 100-page dossier with references, analysis, videos showing their coaching in action and a great degree of background information.

“We then met with the London members of our board on Monday of this week. Unai and I, and Raul, flew to Atlanta on Monday evening. We met in Atlanta with Stan and Josh Kroenke, flew back on the red-eye last night, so we are a little bit worse for wear, but all of the board members were energised and enthusiastic about the recommendation and enthusiastically endorsed the recommendation."