Winning football matches in pursuit of Arsenal’s first Premier League title in two decades has moved way beyond the formation, tactics, the 11 players in the starting line-up and the substitutes named on the bench for Mikel Arteta.
To hear the lengths he goes to, his subtle manipulations and mind games he plays, it sounds more like a complex combination of psyops, spycraft and sleight-of-hand trickery than mere football coaching.
He can, for example, be found watching opposition manager pre-match press conferences, looking for any accidental slips that might give away even the most incremental hints of new information. A missing player that might alter formation, a manager’s new way of thinking, what alternative breakfast cereal brand they have started eating.
On matchday, he often watches videos of the opposition leaving the team bus and entering the stadium, seeking more clues.
Clearly that level of curiosity and scrutinisation leads to a personal paranoia that other coaches are reciprocating, and, as such, Arsenal players have heard him ask an injured player to join them on the bus and, completing the disguise with a washbag, head to the changing room with the rest of the squad, to throw a curveball into the opposition manager’s plans.
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The day after a game, when the players return to the club’s London Colney training centre, Arteta ensures the match statistics and data, taken from the players’ GPS vests, are beamed on the screen in the changing room for all to see. Each player is shown who was the fastest, who ran the furthest, who did the most sprints.
Nobody wants to be the player who ran the least. Results and team metrics are more important than individual performances, but it is, nonetheless, a gentle nudge up the backside as preparations for the next game begin.
These anecdotes offer further insights into one of the most complex and intricate coaching minds of the modern era. It is why Arsenal’s players believe that with the age profile of the squad and the manager in charge, trophies will follow in the years to come; that the near misses of the last two seasons are not an anomalous period they will be unable to resurrect, but evidence of a machine priming for silverware.
After two close-run title races with Manchester City, Liverpool have emerged as the surprise frontrunners under Arne Slot, amassing an astonishing nine-point lead after 13 games. But there are many reasons why Arsenal, in second, shouldn’t be written off just yet.
Box? What box?
If you asked Arteta why or how it is that he can think outside the box quite so much, he would probably fix you with quizzical stare before asking, deadpan, what a box is, or explaining that the box is, in fact, a dodecahedron.
He is a lateral thinker, unrelenting in his exploration of new angles with which to approach different problems.
Take his approach to away games. Arteta tries to make them feel as much like home as possible, filling the away dressing room with pictures and posters of the team, putting up motivational banners – even taking a replica of the iconic clock that told the time for 70 years at Highbury and now hangs outside the Emirates Stadium.
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One banner spotted on their travels to Tottenham Hotspur’s stadium, in April, had “BASICS” written on it, reminding the players of the fundamentals: Boxes. Attack. Shape. Intensity. Compete. They won the game 3-2.
Arteta has gone to extreme lengths to surprise and cajole his players: out for a team meal one night he enlisted a group of professional pick-pocketers to steal phones and wallets while players sat at the table, at the end of the meal explaining what had happened and the importance of being alert and always read.
He famously belted “You’ll Never Walk Alone” out of speakers during training to prepare for a trip to Anfield. And held a glowing lightbulb in the middle of the dressing room moments before kick-off, asking his players to connect and shine like it.
“In my time in football, I have never seen anyone work this hard as he and his staff do every single day, to cover all the details, all the eventualities,” Oleksandr Zinchenko writes in his new autobiography Believe.
Zinchenko, of course, played under Pep Guardiola for five years before joining Arteta at Arsenal.
Then there is Win – the chocolate Labrador therapy dog who lives at the training ground. Arteta chose Win and she has been a masterstroke in enhancing moods – it’s almost impossible not to be cheered by her.
Players help look after her and have taken her home to stay with their families.
Big all-staff barbecues, a team dog, mysterious pranks – “Everything he does is geared towards finding an edge and fostering a spirit of community,” Zinchenko writes.
Adding later in the book: “Mikel’s idea was to foster that family feeling and bring everyone together in their shared fondness for Win. And for winning, I guess. Our lives are shaped by what we love.”
Arteta’s vision
Perhaps the thinking behind the banner telling players about the basics is that the football is anything but.
At the sharp edge of the Premier League, the game has moved way beyond lining up in a set formation, attacking with the ball while ensuring your defenders are back to protect against the counter-attack, camping in your own half when out of possession.
“It doesn’t get more intricate than Arteta’s vision of the game,” Zinchenko writes, describing playing for Arsenal as “much harder” and “more complicated” than the “the old way”.
Arteta expects his players to press in specific groups in specific areas of the pitch, to play in boxes, to set “traps” to lure unsuspecting opponents in and punish them, preferably with a swift attack that results in a goal.
“On the ball, there are lots of moves and principles you need to adhere to. You can’t just freestyle. There are so many things to take into account; it’s like learning a new language.”
Soccer Football - Champions League - Arsenal Training - Arsenal Training Centre, London Colney, Britain - November 5, 2024 Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta and Oleksandr Zinchenko during training Action Images via Reuters/Matthew Childs
Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta and Oleksandr Zinchenko during a training session (Photo: Reuters)
He’ll be o-Kai
With his deceptively languid style, a selflessness to put in the hard work in places on the pitch where the cameras aren’t focussing and a £65m price tag, Kai Havertz always feels only a handful of goalless games away from widespread criticism.
But the belief in Havertz from Arteta and his teammates never wavers. When Havertz scored only once in his first 19 Arsenal games, and questions about the necessity and wisdom of the signing were at their loudest, there were no outward signs of struggle or panic during training sessions, no drop in effort or focus.
Teammates love his runs off the ball, the many that may not result in Havertz receiving a pass but draw one or two opponents out of position to make space for another choreographed move to flourish.
Havertz is an unconventional striker (albeit one still scoring at a rate close to a goal every other game) but one of Arsenal’s great strengths lies in spreading of goals throughout the team.
“Having a player like that in your ranks is a tremendous asset,” Zinchenko observes. “Kai will improve your team’s game in a very selfless manner.”
Fans “will scream for numbers, they want big moments”, he adds, “whereas 100 good moments per game are far more valuable for a team who want to dominate”.
Nico few goals
Arsenal scored an astonishing 20 goals from set pieces last season – the most in the league and four more than Manchester City. And they were notoriously defensively tight against them – only City conceded fewer times.
Huge credit for that goes to set-piece specialist coach Nicolas “Nico” Jover, who Guardiola signed from Brentford at Arteta’s recommendation, then followed Arteta to north London.
Jover could feel a little sidelined at City at times but set pieces have become an integral part of life at Arsenal, with time carved out to work on defending and attacking set pieces in almost every session.
For free kicks, corners and even throw-ins, Jover is constantly devising new ideas and plays for the players to work on in training and execute matches.
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Chasing perfection
You can feel Arteta’s intensity exuding from the way Zinchenko describes how he felt in the aftermath of being at fault for Arsenal conceding Liverpool’s equaliser in the 1-1 draw at Anfield last December, in the chapter titled “Chasing Perfection”. (They had taken the lead via a free kick move, naturally.)
Trent Alexander-Arnold had the ball and Zinchenko recalls recognising the danger: that with one of those precision passes Mohamed Salah could be played in behind. And true enough, Alexander-Arnold played the “perfect” ball.
Zinchenko managed to catch Salah, but then in the split second it took him to realise he had no back-up, that he was one vs one with the most devastating one vs one attacker in the game, the mistake was made. Salah shuffled past him and fired beyond David Raya.
“What I should have done, of course, is to prioritise the right things,” he writes. “Protect the inside, close down his left foot. That’s the most important thing. Make him cross with his weaker right foot, or shoot with it from a bad angle.
“The problem isn’t that you don’t know what to do, it’s to do it quickly enough. By the time I understood how to position my body correctly in that moment, Raya was already picking the ball out of the net.”
The error was brought up in the dressing room after the game, and Zinchenko has watched the clip back countless times since. Friends and family told him not to dwell on it, that, “Bro, he’s Mohamed Salah, he’s one of the best wingers in the world”, but Zinchenko can’t let it go. “Two steps to my right and the situation would’ve changed completely.”
In the basest possible terms: don’t concede that goal, and win that game 1-0, and Arsenal win the 2023-24 Premier League title on goal difference.
But Zinchenko is convinced their time will come. “I don’t think it’s brave to predict we will be one of the favourites in any competition we take part in. I am 100 per cent sure we are on the right track, the way we all work together, help each other, push each other.
“We will be able to make our supporters happy by lifting trophies in due course. That’s what they really want to see. And that’s no less than they deserve, for giving us such massive support.”