Football news - Arsenal 'considering' Jose Mourinho as replacement for Unai Emery

The Gunners failed to win again yesterday, drawing 1-1 with Wolves to miss out on three points for the seventh time already this season in the Premier League and were booed off the pitch at the Emirates.

Unai Emery's side sit fifth in the table and will be six points adrift of the top four and Champions League qualification if Leicester beat Crystal Palace today.

Returning to the top competition in European club football is said to be an essential part of the Arsenal hiearchy's forward planning and they are concerned that Emery may not be able to deliver that.

According to the Sunday Times, head of football Raul Sanllehi had dinner with Mourinho last week and he was impressed by the former Chelsea and Manchester United manager's plans for the team.

However, the club have denied any suggestions that the pair have met recently.

Emery has not lacked for backing from the board, who smashed Arsenal's transfer record to bring in Nicolas Pepe over the summer as well as spending money on David Luiz and Kieran Tierney.

But the Gunners remain vulnerable at the back and unable to control games in midfield, problems that have needed solving at the Emirates for a number of years.

Emery remains in post for the moment but reportedly only has "one or two games of credit" left before his superiors lose their patience.

Mourinho has been out of work since he was replaced by Ole Gunnar Solskjaer in December last year and has regularly spoken about his desire to get back into management.

"The only thing that I know is what I don't want," said Mourinho.

"What I don't want is crystal clear. What I want, the general profile of it, of course [I know], but I can't say obviously [which] clubs and countries.

"And I am quite pathological in this sense of I have to play to win.

"Then if I win or I don't win then that's my problem; and the players and the club and the structure.

"But I need a project where the feeling is I play to win.

"If someone gives me a wonderful, incredible, amazing 10-year contract and tells me that 'the objective of the team is to stay in the first part of the table; if you finish seven or eight or nine it's perfect,' that's not for me. That's my nature.

"Of course sometimes I remember what I did before, what I won before, this kind of thing, but it's not me. So my next is to fight to win."