Mikel Arteta's Unconventional Methods to Prepare Arsenal for Chaos
Mikel Arteta has never been shy about pushing the boundaries of preparation. Now he has admitted he went as far as sabotaging Arsenal’s own pre-season travel plans – all to harden his squad for chaos on the road.
The Arsenal manager revealed he deliberately made his players late for matches, changed routes, shifted meal times, cranked up the heat in dressing rooms and even cut down the number of massage beds. All of it by design. All of it to make them uncomfortable.
The method to the madness? Nights like the one they have just endured.
Arsenal’s midweek trip to face Napoli in the Champions League was thrown into disarray by the Air Traffic Control crisis on Tuesday. The Premier League champions were scheduled to fly out of Luton Airport at around 3pm UK time, but delays meant they reached Italy roughly three hours later than planned.
Asked if that disruption had affected his players, Arteta’s answer came with a smile. This was exactly what he had been planning for.
“I love those challenges. I tried to create them in pre-season!” he said. “So when they happen, we know how to experience them and we already know.”
He wanted the squad to feel the stress before it really counted. To strip away the comfort of the usual matchday routine and see how they responded.
“Get to the stadium very late, change the routine so the players have to do something else,” he explained. Flights can be cancelled. Trains can be delayed. Traffic can gridlock a team coach. Arteta’s message is simple: panic is not an option.
“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.”
So he turned pre-season into a controlled storm.
“Just delaying the meals, delaying the transport, taking a different route. We’ve done many things,” he said. Then came the physical discomfort. “Make the dressing room hotter, more difficult, more challenging, less [massage] beds. Those kinds of things because we’re going to have to adapt to different contexts. And we will try to anticipate this and adapt to difficult conditions.
“When there’s no element of surprise or stress on a matchday, I think it’s important.”
This is not a one-off quirk. It fits a pattern.
Arteta has long embraced unconventional methods to sharpen his players’ focus. Last year, he made headlines when it emerged he had ordered his then head of sports science and performance, Tom Allen, to hire a pickpocket to steal from his own squad during an evening meal.
The thief posed as a waiter. Players sat, ate, talked, oblivious. After dinner, Arteta gathered them for a pre-match meeting. At the end, he produced their stolen items at the front of the room.
The point was brutal and crystal clear. They were preparing to face a team that, in Arteta’s words, would try every possible tactic to gain an edge. He wanted his players to live that feeling, to develop what he called a “pickpocket mentality” – always alert, always aware that someone is trying to steal an advantage.
The cameras of Amazon Prime’s “All or Nothing” documentary captured more of the same thinking. Before a trip to Anfield, with Liverpool fans back in full voice, Arteta filled the training ground with “You’ll Never Walk Alone” blaring from loudspeakers. If his players were going to be swallowed by the noise, better to taste it first.
For another game at the Emirates, he turned to symbolism. A pre-match team talk built around a lightbulb. He wanted his players to shine, to project energy and light to one another, to see themselves as a connected circuit rather than isolated parts.
To some, these ideas might look eccentric. To Arteta, they are essential details in the construction of a winning mentality.
Delayed flights, hot dressing rooms, missing massage beds, stolen wallets, deafening anthems, glowing lightbulbs – all of it feeds the same obsession. When pressure spikes and the script falls apart, Arsenal must not.
