How Arteta changed Arsenal’s culture and turned them into champions

Football writer Sam Cunningham analyses Mikel Arteta’s exhaustive rebuild of Arsenal and how he has taken the club to Premier League glory for the first time since 2004.

Five days before he was appointed Arsenal manager, Mikel Arteta sat in the opposition dugout at Emirates Stadium with Manchester City, unable to comprehend what he was witnessing.

Arteta, an Arsenal player from 2011 to 2016, had lifted the FA Cup twice as captain then lived through the late-Wenger turbulence, but this felt different.

Arsenal were three goals down by half-time, and they finished the match in front of thousands of empty seats and in an eerie quiet.

Arteta, assistant to Pep Guardiola, the manager he would spend the next half-decade trying to dethrone, was stunned by how far the club had fallen.

When Arteta was handed the job of reigniting Arsenal, reconnecting with the supporters became a priority.

It has been an ongoing, sometimes difficult process, but the results have been unmistakable in recent weeks.

Watch Arsenal’s journey to the title

Supporters lined the streets to welcome the team coach into Emirates Stadium before producing one of its greatest atmospheres as Arsenal reached a first UEFA Champions League final in 20 years, and at crucial points on the way to ending a 22-year wait for the Premier League title.

Attention to detail is one of Arteta’s defining traits. He requested the tunnel cover be removed at the Emirates so that both teams could hear the noise of the crowd before kick-off – inspiring his own and unsettling opponents.

He also made North London Forever the club’s matchday anthem, a song now woven into their resurgence.

Motivational master

Arteta’s meticulousness extends to every inch of the club.

Motivational messages cover the walls at their London Colney training base. Next to one reading “Together we make history” on a wood-slatted wall, Arteta installed a black silhouette of a Premier League trophy – only lighting it after winning the title. New signings were shown the silhouette and told exactly why it was there.

In his seven years at Arsenal, he has become the master of motivation, cultivating a high-performance culture.

In May 2023, Arteta introduced a chocolate Labrador (below) to the training ground, assigning a staff member as her primary carer. “Her name is Win, we all love winning and Win needs a lot of love,” Arteta told the club’s official website at the time.

“So the love for Win, that was basically the feeling.”

The players adore Win and take turns walking her.

Around the same time, he had a 150-year-old olive tree planted in the grounds. “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,” he said.

Tailoring training sessions

Arteta thinks carefully about the right messages to convey, tailoring training sessions depending on the moment.

In one session, he played a TikTok edit on a big screen while the players trained beneath it. In another, they formed a circle balancing pens between their fingers while moving with the ball to sharpen concentration.

He has been pleased to see the players taking the initiative and generating their own ideas.

Energy was a recurring theme in the All or Nothing Amazon documentary, when cameras were allowed behind-the-scenes during the 2021/22 season.

After losing three of their first five games, ahead of a north London derby, on a flip-chart Arteta drew a cartoon heart labelled “passion” and a brain, with “clarity” written above, holding hands, and a flag-holding Arsenal fan in the background.

“Guys, we have to play with our big hearts,” he told the squad. “At the same time, we have to play with a big brain – and these have to work together.” They were 3-0 up after 34 minutes and won comfortably.

Before other games, he invited Stuart MacFarlane, the club photographer of 30 years, to deliver an impassioned speech, and he once told the players about the heart surgery he underwent as a child.

On one occasion, Arteta aimed to galvanise his players ahead of an important away fixture at Liverpool by blasting the Reds’ anthem “You’ll Never Walk Alone” over a PA system at the training ground.

Watch: Arteta plays Liverpool’s anthem

In another changing room scene, Arteta plugged a giant bulb into a socket to demonstrate energy and connectivity. “A bulb by itself is nothing, I want to see a team connected to each other and that shines,” he said.

World-class staff

Arteta looks for three qualities in every new player or staff member: passion, respect, and what he calls “the we” – a commitment to the collective.

He believes he has found that in his staff, and the final puzzle piece of his title-winning backroom team came from a relationship formed 26 years ago.

While on a season-long loan at Paris Saint-Germain when he was 18, Arteta grew close to Gabriel Heinze (below, left), who replaced Carlos Cuesta as his assistant last summer.

Heinze was “like a brother” to Arteta, former team-mate Didier Domi recalled.

Heinze has overseen the organisation and aggressive intensity of a defence that has conceded the fewest goals and kept the most clean sheets in the league this season.

Set-pieces have been another defining strength. Nicolas Jover, the set-piece coach who turned Arsenal into record-breakers, had a long-standing relationship with Arteta before joining Arsenal in summer 2021.

At Man City, Arteta recommended Jover to Guardiola and, joining as an assistant with a focus on set-pieces in July 2019, he was a key figure in the 2020/21 title win before joining up with Arteta two months later.

Jover had previously worked closely with goalkeeper coach Inaki Cana at Brentford. Cana was one of Arteta’s first hires, arriving four days after he became head coach.

The Spaniard had coached David Raya at Brentford and has been pivotal in Raya – who signed from the Bees in July 2024 – becoming a serial Golden Glove winner, being presented with his third successive award on Monday night.

Assistant coach Albert Stuivenberg has also been part of the project from day one.

Squad regeneration: ruthless calls and academy prospects

Only one player remains from the starting XI of Arteta’s first game in charge. It is indicative of what Arteta went on to do that the player is the academy jewel, Bukayo Saka.

On a rain-soaked Boxing Day down on the south coast, 18-year-old Saka played left-back in a 1-1 draw with AFC Bournemouth.

Arsenal fell behind and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang equalised, but the Gabon striker was part of a group of senior players – including Mesut Ozil and David Luiz – eased out to make space for emerging talent.

Alongside Saka, Emile Smith Rowe was an early breakout, followed by Ethan Nwaneri and Myles Lewis-Skelly. The latest is Max Dowman, who became the youngest Premier League goalscorer when he netted against Everton in March.

Watch: Dowman’s historic goal v Everton

Those close to Arteta describe a “single-mindedness” essential to making tough decisions.

Aaron Ramsdale was outstanding in the 2022/23 season and was named in the PFA Team of the Year, yet Arteta still signed Raya and, despite facing intense scrutiny, gradually made the Spaniard his No 1 – a call now fully vindicated.

Considering “the we”, he saw something in Raya that elevated the whole team in a way Ramsdale’s talent alone could not.

Arsenal now possess one of the strongest squads in the world, with at least two elite players in every position. The days of half-empty stands at the Emirates feel like a distant memory.