Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta admits not replacing Arsene Wenger directly has helped him.

Arteta admits he held talks for the job before Arsenal went with Unai Emery.

He said, "It does [cross my mind when taking the job], but it was tiny in comparison to the excitement and the opportunity that I saw to join this club and try to do what we all wanted to do, which is to get it back to where Arsene took it at the highest level and obviously that desire was much bigger than the worries of failure

"It was close, but things happen for a reason and probably was too soon. There are people who made the decisions and they made a different decision.

"For me to turn down this club is extremely difficult and when you see it closely, there is something happening there that you just want to do it. But, again, they signed another exceptional coach that again is showing in Villarreal how good he was, but sometimes it's not about the capacity of a person, it's the capacity of the context that you showed or the team that it fits, if it's the right moment or not the right moment, sometimes it's not about the capacity, it's about the timing.

"The thing is, the expectations of this club are going to be always the best because we're going to compare all the time with the beautiful moments that we lived together here. There is no choice when is the perfect moment, I don't know. What I'm saying is, do I really enjoy what I am doing and how we're doing it? Yes, because I know what we can do, what our potential is and where we want to take it and the rest is just fear that you're going to fail because you're looking there, but you need to understand when you can get there. And especially how you can get there, and the how is clear, probably it's a matter of time, but if you start to go there and try to find the how when you don't have the tools to do it, I think you're going to struggle."