The Athletic journalist Chris Waugh has revealed that Manchester City assistant manager Mikel Arteta considered a move to Newcastle in the summer.
He has claimed that talks were at an advanced stage to bring Arteta to Tyneside, but the club eventually ended up appointing Steve Bruce from Sheffield Wednesday.
Speaking on the Newcastle Fan TV podcast, he said this:
Who Newcastle’s first choice was? Now I know they looked at Patrick Vieira. They were very keen on Patrick Vieira.
The same with Mikel Arteta, the assistant manager at Man City. I think talks got reasonably advanced with Arteta’s people and I think there was a stage where he was considering it, but it never got to the stage where it was imminent and he was going to be appointed.
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Would Arteta have been a better appointment than Steve Bruce?
Given the fact that Arteta has not managed a senior team in his career so far, it would have been a big gamble from Newcastle. Bruce has been around the block and kept teams up in the Premier League in the past, which means that he could have been seen as a safe bet.
However, Arteta would not be Pep Guardiola’s second-hand man if he was not an excellent coach, with the incredibly high standards at the Premier League champions – as evident by 198 points in the league over the past two campaigns.
Bruce has managed four points in his first four Premier League matches in charge of Newcastle, which suggests that he has steadied the ship since his appointment.
