MIKEL ARETA wants to improve the way he speaks to his players – by inviting a team of RAF fighter pilots to the club’s training ground
The Arsenal manager has always tried to use marginal gains in his bid to get an edge over other teams while also keeping his team talks with players and staff fresh.
And now this could extend to bringing in pilots who know all about talking to each other under pressure.
Arteta said: “I can wake up one day and say, ‘My process on match day is not good enough’.
“The British fighter planes, for example. I will get in touch with those guys, how they communicate, because that is life or death.
“I’m sure they don’t use 20 phrases or 20 words if there is one word. Don’t say, ‘Nah, the wind is coming this way, now you have to turn left’, because boom, dead. So, it will be one word.
“So what is it? How specific can we be? How clear can we be? And bring them in and say, ‘I want you to analyse our process, three days, how we communicate, how we do that in training, how we do that and I want to get better at this’.
“And be vulnerable, you know, and get it smashed and say, ‘You guys are terrible at this, you need to improve’ and so ‘OK, we are going to get better at this’.
“Getting to understand these people, how they think, how they operate, how this relates to Formula One, how this relates to something else and try to improve on that.”
Arteta was talking at the Lead Better, Live Better Summit 2025 earlier this month in London.
The Spaniard once hired professional pickpockets to go around taking things from his stars at a team dinner – this was to teach the squad to be alert at all times.
Arteta also produced a light bulb during a team talk to try and show the players how they need to connect with each.
During the All or Nothing: Arsenal Amazon series, Arteta also drew a heart and a brain holding hands after his team had lost three of their opening five Premier League games.
Arteta once played ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ on loudspeakers during a training session in an attempt to familiarise them with the intimidating atmosphere at Liverpool’s Anfield stadium before an away game there.
The Spanish tactician also had his players squeeze lemons and pour the juice on the same bowl only to realise all of his stars could have squeezed more to add even more drops – the lesson being there is always more they can do on the pitch for the common goal.
And finally there was the dominoes experiment where players had to put hundreds of pieces together in a way that taught them about team work and attention to detail.
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