Arteta’s Chaos by Design: Preparing Arsenal for the Unexpected
Mikel Arteta had seen this coming long before Arsenal’s plane sat motionless on the runway.
When the Premier League champions were held up by air traffic control issues on their way to Italy for Wednesday’s Champions League tie at Napoli, they landed three hours late. It could have been the perfect excuse. Arteta has spent years making sure it wouldn’t be.
Arteta’s chaos by design
“I love those challenges, I try to create them in pre-season,” he said on Friday, before Arsenal’s Premier League trip to Sunderland on Saturday night (20:00 BST).
This isn’t throwaway manager-speak. Arteta has built controlled disruption into the fabric of Arsenal’s preparation. Training sessions shifted at the last minute. Timetables ripped up. Travel plans tweaked. Players sent to the stadium late on purpose, routines broken, comfort zones removed.
“So when they happen, we have already experienced them and we are ready,” he explained.
He wants his squad to know the feeling of arriving at a ground behind schedule, of having to think on their feet. No panic. No drama. Just adjustment.
“Get to the stadium very late, change the routine so the players have to do something else,” he said. “When it happens, and it can – the flight can be cancelled, or the train is delayed, there is so much traffic – I don’t want the players and staff panicking.”
The message is blunt. Use the time. Don’t waste it. And definitely don’t whinge.
“When that happens, adapt to it. We have two or three hours on the plane – can we use it? Play together, spend some time together, sleep.
“But don’t complain or use it as an excuse because it’s not helpful at all.”
Discomfort as a training tool
Arteta’s methods go beyond delayed departures and late arrivals.
He spoke about holding back meals or transport, changing routes to stadiums, even turning the dressing room into a furnace – hotter, more uncomfortable, deliberately awkward. All of it designed to lower the shock factor when something goes wrong on a matchday.
If the unexpected becomes normal, the theory goes, nothing truly unsettles you when the stakes are highest.
It fits a pattern Arsenal’s players know well by now: their manager is constantly searching for psychological edges, often in unconventional ways.
The light bulb, the pickpockets and the dog
Arteta’s quirks have become part of his story.
He once marched into the dressing room with a light bulb, using it as a prop while demanding his players “shine” and bring energy. On another occasion, he went even further, hiring professional pickpockets to attend a team dinner. Phones and wallets vanished from players and staff, only to be revealed later as part of a lesson about staying alert.
In 2023, he introduced a dog named Win at the training ground, explaining that the animal symbolised the squad as a family and was there to lift morale.
To some, these ideas sound eccentric. To Arteta, they’re tools. Each stunt, each disruption, each uncomfortable moment feeds into the same objective: a group that stays calm, united and focused when everything around them frays.
So when a Champions League flight is delayed and a three-hour wait threatens to unsettle preparations, Arsenal already know the script. The manager wrote it in July, not on the runway in September.
