Last week Motherwell boss, Stuart McCall declined the current job vacancy due to his concerns over the slashing of the wage budget. And the Lane chiefs automatically turned their attentions to Arnold, 49 who has an impressive CV, managing the Australian National Team (2006-07) and last season won the A-League with Central Coast Mariners and Nick Montgomery.
He says he was approached by Sheffield United director (and former manager) Dave Bassett. "In all honesty, I didn't have to think too long or too hard about it. It just wasn't for me.” Arnold told Sky Sports News; "Forget that the financial offer in itself was quite poor, but I would have been taking three steps backwards in my development as a professional coach if I had gone. I walked out of that meeting with the club's board and football director Dave Bassett, and said 'wow'. It just blew me away.
"Being one of the bigger lower league clubs, I was expecting a lot more in terms of how they wanted to develop as a club on the field. But they just didn't seem interested when I was talking about playing a short passing game and taking the football another level up. It was about smashing the ball long and working on set-pieces. It was prehistoric stuff. That's not the way to develop a football team."
The Blades board will now turn their attentions to new candidates with (as we believe) former defender Robert Page is interested in the role.