While his public persona is often quite clean-cut, there are times when the more imaginative side of Mikel Arteta that is seen behind the scenes is revealed to the wider world.
Usually, it is not by choice.
Amazon’s All or Nothing documentary series, which followed his Arsenal team for the 2021-22 season, captured some of Arteta’s innovative methods for motivating players, and some further details have seeped into the public sphere through other means.
It is rare that the 44-year-old Spaniard offers up detail in the way he did in his press conference to preview the Premier League game today (Saturday) away to Sunderland. On Friday, he admitted he purposely disrupted some of the club’s pre-season plans to try to prepare his players for the unexpected.
Clearly, he is more quirky than he normally makes out to be.
Here is a look at some of Arteta’s outside-the-box managerial shenanigans during almost seven years as Arsenal boss.
1. Delayed meals, transport and making rooms hotter
We’ll start with this week’s entry. Arteta’s admission came after a discussion around Arsenal’s routine being potentially disrupted due to a significantly delayed flight to Italy for their Champions League opener away to Napoli on Wednesday night.
He said he loved those sorts of challenges and even goes as far as creating his own during pre-season, saying: “Get to the stadium very late, change the routine. Delay the meals, delay the transport, take different routes. We’ve done many things. Make the dressing rooms hotter, more difficult, less (massage) beds.”
The aim with all of this is to make any future disruptions seem like less of a surprise for his players, no matter what they might experience on a matchday.
If that seems extreme, the next entry is just as offbeat.
Arteta spoke about how he mixed things up for his players in pre-season (Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)
2. The pickpockets
Arteta frequently sets up dinners with his players to help with team-building.
In August 2024, The Athletic revealed that at one such gathering, the manager had hired a team of professional pickpockets to secretly go around the tables, pinching phones and wallets from his players. At the end of the meal, he asked them to empty their pockets, knowing that many would find they were missing their valuables.
The idea was to teach his squad the importance of being ready, alert and prepared — at all times. It was particularly fitting considering an on-pitch issue that had plagued Arsenal during the 2023-24 season was lapses in concentration which cost them cheap goals.
3. Seating plans
Arteta has not only used pre-season to prepare his players for the unexpected, but also to mix up the group a bit more.
In 2023, former Arsenal Under-21s left-back Lino Sousa talked to The Athletic about his experience while away on a summer tour with the senior squad: “Sometimes, for dinner and lunch, we got put into tables, and they’ll make the seating plan. One of the times, I sat with Mikel (Arteta), Albert (Stuivenberg, the assistant manager), (first-team players) Mo Elneny and Rob Holding, and you have to socialise. It’s good, because you get to know more about them.”
4. Training to music
Episode three of that All or Nothing series covered a 4-0 away loss to Liverpool in November 2021, before which it was revealed Arteta had blasted the Merseyside club’s ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ anthem out of speakers at training to prepare his players for the atmosphere awaiting them at Anfield.
The result of the game opened Arteta up to broad criticism and ridicule, but that has not affected him. He has been happy for broadcast cameras to capture the use of music in open training (where the first 15 minutes of a session, mostly warm-ups, are in front of watching media members) since. In January 2025, after a run of one win in five games, his players geared up to Brazilian Samba music.
“That is something that we’ve done for many years now, and it is part of training,” he said when asked about it. “We use music as another element of our training sessions to build the energy and change certain purposes that we want in the training session, and I think the players enjoy it.
“Depending on the day, sometimes certain players pick certain songs — the first song, the first two songs, the last song — it’s the same as in the dressing room really.”
Speaking to TNT Sports this summer, he added: “Probably the biggest work has been on making sure that they realise how incredible and good they are, because in moments of doubt, that’s what I thought: that the mental side will play the biggest part, and then I had a direction to take.
“OK, I’m going to convince them through the tactical aspect, talking about concepts, about habits, or doing this magic on the tactics board, and using, especially music, to connect with them because music, I believe, is the most powerful thing to do, especially with that many cultures, and create moments before games that I’m sure they’re going to remember much more than the results.”
This all went to a different level just before last season’s title run-in.
Rather than just having speakers set up by the training pitch, Arteta rolled out massive screens to play a TikTok edit with a song about each player, that he said they loved, on repeat while they did their session.
5. Lightbulbs, tweets, drawings and non-playing staff
Three moments from the All Or Nothing series helped show how Arteta’s thinking outside the box gets buy-in — and how they also happen inside the Emirates Stadium’s dressing room just minutes before kick-off.
An Arteta drawing, which was far from a Van Gogh, is arguably the most memorable of these.
Before a north London derby against Tottenham, he put together a rough sketch of a heart (captioned ‘passion’) and a brain (captioned ‘clarity’) holding hands and lifting up an ‘Arsenal FC’ banner. He said this would create energy in the stands. The message was more about feeling than any tactical setups, and he doubled down on this by allowing team photographer Stuart MacFarlane to make an impassioned speech before the players took to the pitch. They scored three first-half goals that day, and won 3-1.
The famous lightbulb was brought out later that season. The purpose? Arteta emphasised the importance of his players being connected, because “a bulb by itself is nothing”. Again, the overriding point was to connect with the Emirates crowd to create energy, electricity and light.
These moments have been part of Arsenal fans’ online lexicon ever since, with Arteta’s drawing made into T-shirts (worn on at least one occasion by the club’s then sporting director Edu). A banner with the same design was spotted at their Premier League trophy parade through north London in May.
A banner at the parade (Art de Roché/The Athletic)
Just as viral a dressing-room moment was the use of a tweet from Ivan Toney ahead of Arsenal’s second meeting with his Brentford team during the 2021-22 season.
They had lost 2-0 to the newly-promoted side on the campaign’s opening day in early August, with Toney tweeting, “Nice kick about with the boys” afterwards. The reverse fixture was not until the February, but Arteta had not forgotten, showing a screenshot of the tweet to rile up his players just before kick-off. Arsenal won 2-1.
6. Literal and figurative fire
It’s fair to say Arteta cares about visuals when getting a message across. Back in April, he was on the back-foot after a home defeat to Bournemouth which could have been critical in the title battle with Manchester City.
During a question about what he wants to see from players and fans in Arsenal’s next game, against Sporting CP in the second leg of a Champions League quarter-final, he interrupted with: “No fear. Pure fire. That’s it. Me, the first one. Pure fire. That’s what I want to see on the players, on the people, on myself. That’s it.”
The speech caught everyone’s attention, as did the fact that a fire was actually lit at the club’s training ground to inspire the players later that week. Arsenal beat Sporting en route to the Champions League final, and of course held off City to win the Premier League.
7. Press-conference messages to fans
Arteta knows when he wants to talk directly to a specific group of people in one of his press conferences. This happened more often towards Arsenal fans last season, with the manager taking it upon himself to try to build anticipation for games.
Before a home game against Brentford last December which had an unusual 7.30pm kick-off, he stated the start time three times in a single answer to try to ensure the message got across. A few weeks later, he told supporters to “enjoy the moment” after a 3-2 loss to visitors Manchester United.
The time-related messages returned later in the season when, before that 2-1 defeat by Bournemouth (in a 12.30pm kick-off), he joked the crowd should “bring their lunch and dinner” to the Emirates because of that early start.
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8. Training-ground additions
One of the most popular new arrivals to the Arsenal training ground in recent years has been that of their team dog, a chocolate Labrador named Win, in 2023. Win has been a common sight around the place since, with Arteta highlighting how she helped change the energy and bring more love to the squad’s working environment. Players particularly took to her arrival, with some even bringing her home for a night or two now and again.
Arteta also installed a blacked-out shape of the Premier League trophy at the training ground, which was only meant to be lit if Arsenal won the title. The night they were confirmed as champions, Jurrien Timber filmed team-mate Bukayo Saka gleefully screaming: “Light that up!”
A more subtle Arteta addition was an olive tree, of which he said: “It’s older than 150 years, similar to the club, and we have to look after those roots every single day, make sure they don’t get poisoned, don’t get damaged and it’s in the right condition.”
9. Barbecues and family getaways
Arteta is fond of a barbecue and sometimes uses quiet moments in the season to host them at the training ground. There will be occasions where family members of the players are also in attendance, with the intention being to build connections within his squad even more.
One such moment when the presence of players’ families was particularly beneficial was a mid-season training break to Dubai in the 2023-24 season.
Arsenal won 16 of the final 18 league games after that warm-weather getaway. While their on-pitch work during it was mostly about fine-tuning small details, the inclusion of family members on the trip was said to be quite different to the norm for such camps, but a very welcome change.