An extension lead is rigged up at Arsenal’s training ground. The speakers are brought to the side of the pitch. Mikel Arteta has selected the soundtrack to their preparations for a trip to Anfield. And so You’ll Never Walk Alone rings out around London Colney. As Arsenal duly lose 4-0, perhaps he would have been better off simply picking Kieran Tierney instead of the accident-prone Nuno Tavares.
He fares better by borrowing Stuart MacFarlane, the club photographer and lifelong fan, to deliver a team talk before the north London derby. Arsenal duly demolish Tottenham. Perhaps, though, the inspiration came not from the camera, but a drawing as Arteta, Pictionary-style, sketches someone waving an Arsenal scarf, a massive heart and brain either side of them. It could have made the difference. Although maybe Nuno Espirito Santo just got his tactics so horribly wrong by neglecting to have a proper midfield that the gimmicks were completely irrelevant except in what they say about Arsenal’s obsessive manager.
All Or Nothing: Arsenal offers insights into Arteta’s methods and feels an appropriate title for a documentary of a season that ultimately left Arsenal with neither: bottom and goalless after three games, leaving Alexandre Lacazette wondering if they were making the worst start in Premier League history, they surged into the Champions League places, only to contrive to end up fifth.
But a more accurate name might be Being Mikel Arteta. He endures fans shouting abuse as he tries to drive away from August’s defeat to Chelsea and tells his team about the open-heart surgery he had as a toddler to save his life. The Amazon show gets inside his head as he tries to get inside his players’ heads; or, at the very least, gets inside the dressing room to discover some curious motivational techniques (though, oddly enough, there is no footage immediately after the 5-0 defeat to Manchester City, for instance, and airbrushing means certain issues go unaddressed).
Maybe the cameras turn every manager into David Brent or Michael Scott. The chances are that Arteta, who can give off a cold, clinical air, did not start out that way. A tactician and a highly rated coach – Granit Xhaka calls him “a freak but in a positive way, he sees details” – is trying to turn himself into a people person and a man-manager. “I cannot treat players like numbers,” he said. “They are people. I need to understand them emotionally as well, what happens in their lives.” Arteta quotes Pep Guardiola’s advice – “this is the loneliest profession” – and his group chats can appear forced as though, in a nod to his mentor, he has overthought his ploys to galvanise an entire squad. Sometimes they lend themselves to mockery.
“When he develops a little bit more of a relationship with the players, he can go to another level,” says director of football Edu, noting progress during autumn’s unbeaten run, when the Spaniard seems more relaxed, though the fourth episode is due to detail the dramatic decision to exile his captain, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. It may provide evidence of Arteta’s ruthlessness to counter-balance the slightly artificial attempts at cuddliness.
Three months before Aubameyang’s downfall, club director Josh Kroenke – who ended up authorising writing off millions of transfer fees and wages for the banished captain, and there is no mention of Mesut Ozil, who left the previous year – said: “I was annoyed there were so many people trying to fracture the group. At times everybody needs to have an arm around their shoulder.”
Some may think Kroenke comes out of it suspiciously well; as ever, there are questions about the amount of editorial independence. The American appears a supportive presence, texting Bukayo Saka after his Euro 2020 penalty miss, backing Arteta amid early-season defeats. Arsenal’s owners have long felt enigmatic but at least the son of ‘Silent Stan’ Kroenke is talkative Josh, his beard making him look like a kindly Romanov.
Aubameyang only has a bit-part role as the emphasis switches to a different generation. There are signs of a bond among a new-look, younger Arsenal side, which is Arteta’s construct. The decision to invest in youth feels justified by a glimpse into some of their characters.
The ebullient, endearing Saka is the star of the show as well as the team. “Imagine scoring in the north London derby, bro,” he says to Emile Smith Rowe. “Best thing ever.” They both do. He bemuses Lacazette by asking him if he has been to Thorpe Park. He laments it when he is spotted in the shops despite wearing a mask and hood. He had only dreamt about being a footballer, not about being famous.
The down-to-earth Tierney reveals that when he came to London his mum, a dinner lady and cleaner, worried he would become more of a celebrity than a footballer. He greets Martin Odegaard, when the Norwegian signed on a permanent deal, by saying: “I heard what wages you were getting and I thought, ‘F*****g hell’.”
Saka, Tierney and the likeably open Aaron Ramsdale give an air of authenticity. “That’s f*****g embarrassing,” yells the goalkeeper after Everton score an injury-time winner. “That cost me the bastard clean sheet,” he exclaims after victory over Aston Villa is marred by a late concession.
Maybe it is easier for them to be natural, however. The players have an individual development coach. Arteta seems his own, torturing himself at the low points. “You question yourself, you have fears,” he said. “Difficult things happen in your mind: can I turn it around? Do I have the energy to go back tomorrow and transmit what I have to transmit? Are people going to believe in what we are doing?” They often do, although on his next trip to Anfield it might help if he devotes more time to Klopp and the goalscorers and less to Gerry and the Pacemakers.
