Mikel Arteta has revealed that he likes to set players challenges, such as delaying their meals before matches and making the dressing room hotter, to ensure they are fully prepared for any eventuality.<\/p>\n
Arsenal\u2019s flight to Italy for their Champions League opener against Napoli this week was delayed for more than five hours<\/a>, with Arteta forced to cancel his pre-match press conference after the squad arrived in Naples just before 10pm local time. The disruption proved no handicap as they made it 13 successive league-stage victories in Europe, thanks to Martin \u00d8degaard\u2019s second-half winner<\/a>.<\/p>\n Arteta has a reputation for his innovative methods having previously employed pickpockets during pre-season training camps<\/a> and preparing for a trip to Anfield by pumping crowd noises through a speaker. The Arsenal manager has now explained how his players have been trained to expect things to go wrong. \u201cI love those challenges. I try to create them in pre-season,\u201d he said. \u201cSo 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. Because 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, the staff as well, panicking.<\/p>\n \u201cSo, when that happens, adapt to it. \u2018OK, we have another two or three hours on the plane, how can we use them?\u2019 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 what other methods he has employed, Arteta added: \u201cJust delay the meals, delay the transport, take a different route. We have done many things: make the dressing room hotter, more difficult, more challenging, less [massage] beds. Those kind of things. Because we are going to have to adapt to different contexts and we will try to anticipate it and create the best possible conditions. But when there is that element of stress or surprise on matchday, it\u2019s important [to be prepared].\u201d<\/p>\n Arsenal travel to Sunderland on Saturday night looking to extend their 100% start to the new campaign after being held to a 2-2 draw at the Stadium of Light last year. Leandro Trossard scored Arsenal\u2019s second goal before Brian Brobbey\u2019s late equaliser<\/a> and Arteta contrasted the Belgium forward\u2019s reaction to leaving in the summer with that of Gabriel Jesus. \u201cNo one told me nothing,\u201d said the Brazilian, who was made to train separately from the rest of Arsenal\u2019s squad before moving to Barcelona. Trossard, meanwhile, was at the Emirates for last week\u2019s win over Chelsea<\/a> having joined Beskitas in July.<\/p>\n \u201cVery surprised, to be fair, especially because with Gabriel I had an individual talk in the dressing room,\u201d said Arteta. \u201cAnd the words that we used for each other, it was all about gratitude. So, I don\u2019t know. It\u2019s OK. Sometimes I understand when you have to deliver bad news or news that people don\u2019t expect. Those things are reactive. Somebody has to be the bad cop; if I have to be, I have to be.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat is important is normally what happens three months later, six months later. When Trossard comes in, he\u2019s in the dressing room with all of us, the atmosphere and the relation you have with all the players that they left, at some point their relationship has been really good. I hope that\u2019s the same case.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mikel Arteta has revealed that he likes to set players challenges, such as delaying their meals before matches…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":767433,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-767432","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767432","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=767432"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767432\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/767433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=767432"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=767432"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=767432"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}