Mikel Arteta's Unique Methods to Build Resilience at Arsenal
Mikel Arteta is not leaving Arsenal’s resilience to chance. He is engineering it.
The Spaniard has lifted the curtain on the unusual challenges he sets his players – from delaying pre-match meals to turning up the heat in the dressing room – all designed to harden his squad for the chaos that elite football can throw at them.
Chaos in Naples, control on the pitch
Arsenal’s trip to Italy this week was a textbook example. Their flight to Naples for the Champions League opener against Napoli was delayed by more than five hours, forcing Arteta to cancel his pre-match press conference as the team finally landed just before 10pm local time.
No smooth build-up. No perfect schedule. Yet on the pitch, Arsenal were ruthless. Martin Ødegaard’s second-half strike sealed a 1-0 win and stretched their run to 13 consecutive victories in the league phase of European competition.
For Arteta, that was no coincidence.
“I love those challenges. I try to create them in pre-season,” he explained. “So when they happen, we already experience them and we already know.”
He wants his players living the unexpected long before it hits them in a Champions League week. Arrive late to a stadium. Change the timings. Rip up the routine. Then watch how the squad reacts.
“So, get to the stadium very late, change the routine as soon as the players have to do something else,” he said. “Because when it happens, and it can happen, you can miss the flight, the train can be delayed, there’s so much traffic, and I don’t want the players, the staff as well, panicking.”
The message is simple: adapt or be left behind.
“So, when that happens, adapt to it. ‘OK, we have another two or three hours on the plane, how can we use them?’ Play together, spend some time together, sleep, use it, but certainly don’t complain and then use it as an excuse because that’s not helpful at all.”
Hotter rooms, fewer comforts
Arteta’s reputation for inventive methods is well established. He has previously hired pickpockets during pre-season camps to jolt players’ awareness and once prepared for a trip to Anfield by blasting crowd noise through speakers at training.
Now he has added another layer: stripping away comfort.
Asked what other tricks he has used, he reeled off a list that sounded more like military training than luxury elite sport.
“Just delay the meals, delay the transport, take a different route,” he said. “We have done many things: make the dressing room hotter, more difficult, more challenging, less [massage] beds. Those kind of things.”
The idea is not to punish the squad, but to steel them.
“Because we are going to have to adapt to different contexts and we will try to anticipate it and create the best possible conditions. But when there is that element of stress or surprise on matchday, it’s important [to be prepared].”
Sunderland next, memories of last year
Arsenal head to Sunderland on Saturday night chasing a continuation of their flawless start to the new campaign. Last season at the Stadium of Light, they were dragged into a wild 2-2 draw, Leandro Trossard putting them 2-1 up before Brian Brobbey’s late leveller denied them victory.
That match still lingers in the background. So does Trossard’s departure.
The Belgium forward left for Besiktas in July but was back at the Emirates last week, watching from the stands as Arsenal beat Chelsea. His return – and the way he left – offered a stark contrast to the situation surrounding Gabriel Jesus.
Jesus, now at Barcelona, claimed “No one told me nothing” about his exit, saying he had been made to train away from the main group before the move was completed.
Arteta was asked about that version of events. His response carried a hint of surprise, and a reminder that parting ways is rarely clean.
“Very surprised, to be fair, especially because with Gabriel I had an individual talk in the dressing room,” Arteta said. “And the words that we used for each other, it was all about gratitude. So, I don’t know. It’s OK. Sometimes I understand when you have to deliver bad news or news that people don’t expect. Those things are reactive. Somebody has to be the bad cop; if I have to be, I have to be.”
Trossard’s example, in contrast, is one Arteta clearly values. The winger left, yet still feels comfortable enough to drop back into the dressing room.
“What is important is normally what happens three months later, six months later,” Arteta said. “When Trossard comes in, he’s in the dressing room with all of us, the atmosphere and the relation you have with all the players that they left, at some point their relationship has been really good. I hope that’s the same case.”
Arteta cannot control every delay, every transfer, every late goal. So he is building a team that can live with all of it. The next examination of that mindset comes under the lights at Sunderland, where comfort will be in short supply and excuses even scarcer.
