Mikel Arteta's Innovative Approach to Team Preparation

Mikel Arteta turned Arsenal’s midweek travel chaos into exactly the scenario he has been rehearsing for months.

The Premier League champions landed in Italy three hours later than planned on Wednesday because of air traffic control problems ahead of their Champions League tie at Napoli. Where most managers might see disruption, Arteta saw a drill coming to life.

“I love those challenges, I try to create them in pre-season,” he said on Friday, before Arsenal’s league trip to Sunderland on Saturday night. “So when they happen, we have already experienced them and we are ready.”

This is not bluster. Arteta has spent pre-season deliberately ripping up routines. Training times, meeting schedules, routes to stadiums – all fair game. He wants his players to feel the jolt now, not when the stakes are highest.

“Get to the stadium very late, change the routine so the players have to do something else,” he explained. Flight cancelled. Train delayed. Gridlocked traffic. He wants none of that to trigger anxiety. “I don’t want the players and staff panicking.”

The message is simple: adapt or fall behind.

On that delayed flight to Italy, the instructions were clear. Use the time. “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 builds those inconveniences into the fabric of their preparation. Meals pushed back without warning. Team coaches leaving later than expected or diverting along unfamiliar roads. Dressing rooms cranked up to be hotter, stuffier, more uncomfortable than usual. The idea is to blunt the shock of the unexpected, to strip away stress on matchday when something inevitably goes wrong.

It all fits a pattern with Arteta, a coach who has never been afraid to reach for the unorthodox.

The Spaniard once walked into the dressing room carrying a light bulb, asking his players to be energetic and shine. On another occasion he went even further, hiring professional pickpockets to attend a team dinner and lift phones and wallets from his squad. Only when the players realised what had happened did he reveal the exercise: stay alert, stay switched on, because someone is always trying to take something from you.

In 2023, a dog named Win appeared at the training ground, quickly becoming part of the daily routine. Arteta framed the move as a way to boost morale and embody the idea of Arsenal as a family.

To some, these are quirks. To him, they are tools. And when a Champions League flight lands three hours late and the schedule falls apart, they become the difference between a group rattled by chaos and one that has already lived it.