According to ESPN, Luis Enrique wouldn’t be willing to walk into a new job in mid-season amid links with a move to Arsenal.
The Gunners lost again on Saturday afternoon, falling to a 2-0 defeat at Leicester City as Jamie Vardy and James Maddison found the net.
With just two wins in the last nine Premier League games, boss Unai Emery is coming under increasing pressure, and many fans want the club to pull the trigger now and find a replacement.
Enrique is one name mentioned given that he knows Arsenal’s Head of Football Raul Sanllehi from their time together at Barcelona, but a new report has played down talk of him heading to North London.
It’s claimed that Enrique isn’t keen on returning to football just yet having stepped away from his job as Spain boss for personal reasons in June, whilst he does’t want to walk into a job in mid-season, and would prefer to build a project over a summer.
Enrique understandably stepped away from football as his nine-year old daughter battled bone cancer, until she sadly passed away in August.
Few would blame Enrique for waiting until the end of the season to come back to football, and he may well be on the Arsenal radar if they wait until then to replace Emery, which looks unlikely at this point.
Enrique, 49, will no doubt know compatriot Emery from Spanish football, but he also beat Emery’s Paris Saint-Germain side 6-1 in 2017 to advance in the Champions League, producing a remarkable comeback to dump PSG out.
Taking his job would be another kick for Emery, but it seems that he has no immediate plans to return to management – meaning Sanllehi and co may have to look elsewhere if they want to replace Emery soon.
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