Mikel Arteta has revealed that Arsenal\u2019s summer work was deliberately made awkward, with the manager using preseason to prepare his squad for the kind of disruptions that can unsettle a title challenge.<\/p>\n
The Arsenal boss said he wanted players and staff to face unexpected problems before the Premier League season began, so they would be better equipped when those situations arrived for real. He pointed to the long flight delay that affected preparations for Wednesday\u2019s 1-0 win over Napoli as the sort of issue he has tried to rehearse.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love those challenges,\u201d Arteta laughed. \u201cI try to create them in preseason. So when they happen, we already experience them and we already know. So, get to the stadium very late, change the routine as soon as the players have to do something else.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause when it happens, and it can happen, you can miss the flight, the train can be delayed, there\u2019s so much traffic, and I don\u2019t want the players-but not only the players, the staff as well-panicking. So, when that happens, adapt to it.<\/p>\n
\u201cO.K., 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\u2019t complain and then use it as an excuse because that\u2019s not helpful at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked whether he had been involved in delaying Arsenal\u2019s travel, Arteta joked: \u201cWe can\u2019t get that done yet, but just delaying the meals, delaying the transport, taking a different route … we\u2019ve done many things: made the dressing room hotter, more difficult, more challenging, less beds. Those kind of things.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added that the aim is to help the squad cope with different matchday conditions rather than be rattled by them.<\/p>\n
Arteta\u2019s methods have often drawn mockery, but he will feel justified after leading Arsenal to Premier League glory last season. During that title run, he brought a dog named \u201cWin\u201d to training and later joked that its name had been changed to \u201cWon.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also used a pickpocket disguised as a waiter at a team event, had players handle a lightbulb to underline energy and connectivity, and asked the squad to squeeze lemons to show there was always more to give.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arteta says Arsenal rehearsed disruption in preseason to stay calm when setbacks hit during matches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19341,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,1303,1028],"tags":[1836,59,1980],"class_list":["post-19342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arsenal","category-arsenal-news","category-napoli","tag-2026-27-premier-league","tag-featured","tag-pre-season"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19342\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}