Arsenal haven’t made any contact with Patrick Vieira about taking over from Arsene Wenger, despite the near constant links between the former Gunner and the job.

Sky Sports write that their sources understand Arsenal haven’t approached their former captain in the search for a new manager.

Clearly those who are actually making the decision don’t share that view.

Vieira himself is still managing MLS side New York City FC at the moment. His team are top of the table in the early part of the new season, although only just.

The Frenchman also has some experience of management in England, having taken charge of the Manchester City Reserves for a couple of years after his retirement from playing.

Of course, the main reason why a fair number of Arsenal fans get excited by links to Vieira is his success on the pitch with the club. As captain of the side, the former midfielder led the team through the invincible season. He won three Premier League titles, three FA Cups and three Community Shields in London.

If he could bring anything like that kind of success back as a manager, he’d be a big hit. For now it doesn’t look like Arsenal are willing to take that chance.

Click ‘next’ for the rest of the managers linked to the Arsenal job

Maurizio Sarri

One of the leading names for the Arsenal job is apparently Napoli manager Sarri. Tuesday’s Corriere della Sera writes that if he interests the club, they’ll have to pay up though. Sarri has a contract until 2020, and an €8m release clause.

You’d expect Arsenal to have some money set aside for a situation like this though. When you only change manager once every 22 years you should have time to save up some funds for the new one.

Like the North London club, Napoli have a restricted budget when compared with the league leaders. Nonetheless, the 59-year-old is leading them on a title charge, playing attractive football along the way.

The only problem is that the manager doesn’t speak English, and can be combative in press conferences. That could be an issue managing Arsenal.

Paulo Fonseca

Fonseca isn’t the most recognisable name on this list, but he’s having a fantastic spell with Shakhtar Donetsk.

In 78 matches with the club so far, the manager has won 78% of the time.

The 44-year-old has picked up the Ukrainian Premier League, the Ukrainian Cup and the Ukrainian Super Cup in his first year and a half.

Perhaps even more impressively, his side are making great strides in Europe.

They finished runners-up to Manchester City in the group stage, beating Guardiola’s side 2-1 at home.

Then they won against AS Roma in the first leg of their round-of-16 tie, but ended up going out.

Fonseca also spent a year managing Braga and FC Porto earlier in his career, winning the Portuguese Cup and Super Cup with the two teams respectively.

Carlo Ancelotti

Ancelotti has a massive amount of experience, having managed Juventus, Milan, Chelsea, Paris Saint-Germain, Real Madrid and Bayern Munich.

The Italian manager has also been very successful in picking up trophies. He lifted at least one with all of the above clubs, including the Champions League on three different occasions.

He also won the league with four of his last five clubs, only failing to do so with Madrid.

Since joining Chelsea in 2009, his win ratio with each club has never been less than 60%. Wenger’s current ratio with Arsenal is 57%.

The Gunners have already lost more games this season than Ancelotti lost in his entire spell with Bayern Munich. Although, in fairness, that isn’t saying much.

Ancelotti is currently on a leave of absence from management, after leaving Bayern Munich in September.

He should be available this summer.

Thomas Tuchel

Tuchel has been out of a job since he left Borussia Dortmund last May and the 44-year-old has been linked with a host of jobs.

He hit the headlines in connection with Arsenal recently when claims from Germany said he had agreed to take over at Arsenal, despite there not being any vacancy in north London at the time.

Coveted by Bayern Munich he both wants the Bayern job and has turned it down in favour of Arsenal, depending on where you do your reading. PSG have also been even more heavily linked with him in recent weeks.

Despite Sven Mislintat saying he would have no problem working with Tuchel, the fact is the pair don’t like each other in the slightest and it’s hard to imagine them working together so soon after the rift that helped to bring an end to Tuchel’s time at Dortmund after he banned Mislintat from the training ground.

Brian Meyers, BvB expert, said that Tuchel would “be petty enough to ask Arsenal fire their new head scout as a condition of hiring him.” That is not a move that’s likely to go down well with the fans who have taken a quick shine to the head scout, who moved quickly and decisively upon arriving at Arsenal and landed a young Greek centreback, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and was reportedly key to convincing Arsene Wenger to go after Henrikh Mkhitaryan as part of the Alexis Sanchez deal.

Lucien Favre

Most recently, the media linked Arsenal with a move for Nice manager, Lucien Favre. A report this month claimed the manager is unlikely to see out his contract.

Writing in Blick, Michael Wegmann says, “The contract of the 60-year-old at Nice is still running until the summer of 2019. But since the club paid the transfer fee of €3m-€5m for this coach, no-one in the Cote d’Azur believes that the Master Trainer of the FCZ will meet this.”

Favre, who is under contract with Nice until 2019, and is a manager described as “meticulous, detail obsessed and football crazy.”

He is the type of manager who tells the groundsman how to cut the grass at the training ground.

Favre has also been credited with ‘doing what no coach has achieved before’ in ‘taming’ Mario Balotelli.

The Italian is said to be ‘more concerned with performance than scandal’ since his arrival at the club. Despite that, however, Balotelli is expected to move on in the summer.

Favre is also said to be wanted by Borussia Dortmund and has also been linked with the upcoming Bayern Munich job.

According to L’Equipe, Arsenal added Favre to their shortlist, and are considering the 60-year-old as an Arsene Wenger replacement.

Favre only took up the Nice job last summer having previously managed at Borussia Monchengladbach and Hertha Berlin.

His average in Ligue 1 is 1.55 points per game. To compare, Wenger’s return has been 1.96 points per game at Arsenal.

Joachim Low

For the last 12 years, Low has been in charge of the German national team. The team have had a lot of success during that period, most notably winning the World Cup in 2014.

They also won the Confederations Cup in 2017, as well as finishing as runners up in the European Championship in 2008.

Their third-placed finishes in the World Cup and European Championships in 2010, 2012 and 2016 mean the country have finished in the top-three at the last five major international tournaments.

The main concern is that the 58-year-old would struggle to adapt to club management.

His last job as a club coach ended in 2004, and a massive amount has changed since then.

Plus, he was managing the likes of Austria Wien, Fenerbahce and VfB Stuttgart in those days. Not exactly the top teams in Europe.

Nonetheless, if Low can transfer his international success to Arsenal, he’d make a great appointment.

Mikel Arteta

Every Arsenal fan should already know Arteta from his time with the club as a player.

The Spaniard spent five years in North London, up until his retirement in 2016. After that he joined Manchester City to work as an assistant to Pep Guardiola.

The Telegraph says the 35-year-old is well regarded at Arsenal after his club captaincy. His existing connections with head of football relations Raul Sanllehi as well as Ivan Gazidis should help as well.

It would be a massive gamble to jump from one of the most experienced managers in the game to someone without a single day in charge of a club.

However, Arteta knows Arsenal, and he’s worked under some of the best coaches around.

Manchester City’s massive success this year should have taught him a lot.

He’s worth considering, at least.

Brendan Rodgers

Rodgers’ first experience of management came with the Chelsea reserves between 2004 and 2008.

He then moved onto senior sides in the Championship, before returning to the top flight with Swansea City. Liverpool signed him up after that, and came within a whisker of the Premier League title before Steven Gerrard’s hilarious slip.

Things then went from bad to worse, and eventually Liverpool let Rodgers go in 2015. He moved to Scotland to manage Celtic, and won a domestic treble in his first season.

They’re on course to do the same thing again this year, albeit with very little competition.

It’s hard to judge the 45-year-old on his achievements in Scotland when the league clearly isn’t on par with Europe’s top divisions.

It’s fair to say Rodgers wouldn’t be the most popular appointment with supporters, as the Northern Irish manager achieved a pretty bad reputation in the Premier League during his final seasons with Liverpool.

Though, unlike most of the managers on the list, at least he has some experience managing in England.

Thierry Henry

According to the Telegraph, Henry is more of a fan favourite than the board’s first choice.

The 40-year-old currently spends him time split between working as Belgium’s assistant manager and as a Sky Sports pundit.

Like Arteta, Henry doesn’t have any managerial experience, but he knows Arsenal, and the league.

He also works closely with a lot of Premier League stars with Belgium, like Kevin De Bruyne, Eden Hazard and Romelu Lukaku.

The club’s record goalscorer could almost certainly help Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Alexandre Lacazette reach their potential.

The question is whether he could help the side defensively, because that’s where they probably need the most assistance.

The main advantage of hiring Henry is that most supporters would be willing to give him a chance, after all he’s given to the club.

It’s hard to judge whether the Frenchman is capable of taking that opportunity at this stage.

Fabio Capello

A new name on the list added recently, Fabio Capello has just come onto the market after leaving Chinese side, Jiansu Suning, by ‘mutual consent’ after a poor start to the season. This was his first job in management in three years since the Russia job. That, too, followed a three-year break after the England position.

Once a great manager, Capello has not been in charge of a top club since 2007 when he finished a year-long stint as manager of Real Madrid.

It’s absolutely absurd that he should be linked with the Arsenal job but the former England manager has been installed as one of the frontrunners according to the S*n who are tracking odds with a bookmakers.

However, he recently hinted to the Italian media that he’s planning to retire, so it looks like this one could be a dead end.