Mikel Arteta's Unique Approach to Chaos at Arsenal
Mikel Arteta has never hidden his obsession with control. The twist is that, at Arsenal, he now spends part of his time deliberately giving it up.
The Arsenal manager has revealed he sabotaged the club’s pre-season travel plans and matchday routines on purpose – all to harden his players for chaos on the road.
He made them late. He changed routes. He shifted meal times at the last minute. He turned up the heat in the dressing room and cut down the number of massage beds. Comfort out. Stress in.
“I love those challenges. I tried to create them in pre-season,” Arteta explained. “So when they happen, we know how to experience them and we already know.”
This is not theory for him. It is preparation.
Training for chaos
The backdrop is Arsenal’s disrupted Champions League trip to Napoli in midweek, when the Premier League champions were caught up in the Air Traffic Control crisis on Tuesday.
They were due to fly out of Luton Airport at around 3pm UK time. Delays meant they landed in Italy roughly three hours late, their schedule shredded before a major European tie.
Many managers would see that as a ready-made excuse. Arteta treated it as a test he had already set.
“Get to the stadium very late, change the routine so the players have to do something else,” he said of his pre-season ploys. “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. You can’t control the disruption. You can control the reaction.
“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.”
Asked what, specifically, he had done to unsettle his squad in the summer, Arteta reeled off the details like a coach listing drills.
“Just delaying the meals, delaying the transport, taking a different route. We've done many things.
“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.”
In his world, pressure is not something that arrives at kick-off. It is something you rehearse.
The pickpocket mentality
This is not the first time Arteta’s methods have raised eyebrows.
Last year it emerged that he had instructed his then head of sports science and performance, Tom Allen, to hire a pickpocket to steal from his own players during an evening meal.
The thief posed as a waiter. While the squad relaxed, he quietly lifted items from them. Phones. Wallets. Personal effects.
After dinner, Arteta gathered the squad for a pre-match meeting. At the end, he walked to the front and revealed the stolen items, laid out for all to see.
Shock. Then the lesson.
The stunt was designed ahead of a match against a side known for pushing every boundary to gain an edge. Arteta wanted his team to think the same way – to develop what he called a “pickpocket mentality”, to be permanently alert to rivals trying to “steal” advantages from them.
It was psychological, theatrical and very deliberate. Just like the delayed buses and boiling dressing rooms.
Noise, light and Anfield
The wider public got its first real glimpse of Arteta’s quirks through the Amazon Prime documentary All or Nothing, which tracked Arsenal’s season and peeled back the door to his team talks.
Before a trip to Liverpool, their first at Anfield with fans back in the ground, he turned the training pitch into a soundstage. “You'll Never Walk Alone” blared from loudspeakers as the players worked, the famous anthem looping over and over.
The idea was simple: if you can’t silence Anfield, at least you can stop it feeling new.
For another game at the Emirates, he walked into the dressing room carrying a lightbulb. It was not a prop for the cameras; it was a metaphor. He spoke about his players shining, about transmitting energy and light to one another on the pitch.
To some, it looked eccentric. To his squad, it has become normal.
No excuses
Put it all together and a clear picture emerges. Arteta is building a group that expects disruption, noise, discomfort – and treats them as part of the job, not a reason to fold.
He wants his players to arrive late and stay calm. To be robbed at dinner and think about tactical awareness. To hear Anfield’s roar in north London and shrug when it hits them on Merseyside.
It is an unusual route to resilience. But for a team chasing trophies at home and in Europe, he knows the season will not run on time.
