Having removed the handbrake to beat Newcastle in dramatic fashion on Sunday after a week of defending himself saw Mikel Arteta descend into rhetoric in keeping with an Oval Office briefing from a man who also likes to make it all about himself, we’re reminded that the Arsenal manager isn’t Donald Trump, but a mix of him and the very worst team leader on a corporate away day.
He’s a man who’s used a a lightbulb as a prop to promote “electricity” between the players and the fans in a pre-game speech in which he eruditely pointed out “it would be f***ing dark without this guy”, Thomas Edison.
There were the Lemons, whose “juice is our team magic”, as Arteta took one from a player who said he had squeezed out all the juice only for his manager to illustrate “you can always squeeze more”.
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He hired a pickpocket to steal from his own players – including one who had fought off a baseball-bat wielding thief in real life – to teach them a lesson about ‘the importance of being ready and alert’.
And now he wants to use RAF fighter pilots to improve the way in which he communicates with his players.
To us cynics, the Lead Better, Live Better Summit sounds like the very worst thing in the world, likely attended by some of the worst people in the world taking notes with a stylus on their overpowered iPads with one AirPod in an ear as they multitask listen to The High Performance Podcast and whichever self-obsessed tool is speaking on stage at the time.
As reported by The Telegraph, speaking at the event alongside his friend and legendary basketball coach Steve Kerr, Arteta was asked by moderator Luke Darcy, a former Australian rules footballer, where – as a leader – his curiosity takes him.
“To many places. It’s a constant improvement. I can wake up one day and say ‘my process on match day is not good enough. Why we are communicating to the players, starting from between us coaches to the analysts, to the other guys, to actually how the message is delivered. I don’t like it. Who is the best at that?’”
“So, 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.”
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We love the idea of Arteta limiting himself to one-word instructions on match day. Just saying “handbrake” without telling the players whether it’s on or off, for example.
And while we imagine most of the Arsenal squad has now been indoctrinated, what will new disciples be thinking when he walks into the dressing room in a full flight suit with helmet and oxygen mask?
He may well be a very good football manager, but he might be the last Premier League boss we would want to go for a pint with.
