Wenger fan Pep eyes Arsenal job

ARSENAL have emerged as surprise candidates to land Bayern Munich coach Pep Guardiola, who will announce his plans next week.

Manchester City are regarded as favourites, with Guardiola’s former Barcelona colleagues running the club, and Manchester United are also mentioned as a possibility.

But high-level sources have added Arsenal to the shortlist for Guardiola, who is a huge fan of their style of football under Arsene Wenger.

Wenger’s achievements with the Gunners have been such that he can choose his own leaving date. But his contract expires at the end of next season and it could be that Guardiola takes another sabbatical or stays at Bayern for one more year to wait for a possible Arsenal vacancy.

l ITV SPORT are taking over the cashstrapped BBC’s Formula One commitment from next season — as Sports Agenda predicted — after the Corporation announced a £35million cut in sports rights. It made no sense in the financial climate for the Beeb to be junior Grand Prix partners to Sky. It also looks another sensible move to withdraw from world championship darts after the next year of sharing with BT Sport. The BBC should concentrate on sports with a national resonance, with Sports Minister Tracey Crouch referring to the need for more live coverage of sport on the BBC. This should include cricket, though the Beeb is so dismissive of the national summer sport that Ashes hero Joe Root is not one of the Sports Personality of the Year finalists. ITV’s F1 return is not expected to affect their bid for horse racing, although the fact that specialist channel Racing UK cover all the big races that ITV want to show exclusively is understood to be one reason why that rights announcement has been delayed. THE Sports Journalists’ Association’s British Sports Awards have been frequently criticised in this column for not attracting enough actual sports stars, with a queue of representatives collecting trophies for absent winners. But this year was a vast improvement with all the winners in attendance. Even a Q&A around the tables by Sybil Ruscoe (above), normally an embarrassing hunt to find a well-known face, featured famous sports names. Host Jim Rosenthal’s professional approach also brought gravitas to an event that seemed important once again after many years on the slide.

lIT

seems the defeat against Leicester last Monday made up Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich’s mind to sack Jose Mourinho. The word at the top of the club last week was that the board were unanimous that Mourinho should have more time to turn things around.