Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta is no stranger to a mind game or two, just ask the Gunners he had pickpocketed earlier this season to teach them a lesson about concentration.
But the Spaniard’s mischievous streak isn’t confined to his own players, one of whom has revealed another trick he deploys to bamboozle opposition managers.
Sadly, however, it’s Fantasy Premier League managers who are likely catching strays from Arteta's antics.
Arsenal defender Oleksandr Zinchenko confirms trick played by Arteta
The Gunners' inverted full-back Oleksandr Zinchenko revealed to The Athletic that Arsenal boss Arteta regularly insists on injured players travelling to away games to bait his opposite number into incorrectly guessing Arsenal’s line-up.
"[He] likes to play games with the opposition," the Ukraine international said. "I’ve seen him tell injured players to come on the team bus and walk into the dressing room with their wash bag, to put the other manager off the scent.”
However, also trying to guess the north London club’s XI are the millions of FPL players at home, with their deadline for making transfers normally a few hours before kick-off of the weekend’s first game.
Particularly in the case of Arsenal, with their extensive availability issues this season, it’s led to some in-depth online analysis of training and arrival photos, attempting to identify players in doubt – usually hooded or obscured from view in some other way – using only bits of a player’s arm or judging who they are based on their height.
Arteta – ranked the fourth-best manager in the world right now by FourFourTwo – is no doubt rubbing his hands together, seeing the success of his trickery, as the online community identifies a player he knows isn’t available anyway.
He was one of the least trusted for FPL purposes when it came to press conference updates anyway, but following this revelation from Zinchenko, it will be hard to believe anything that comes out of his mouth – exactly the smoke-and-mirrors atmosphere the meddling manager probably enjoys. Typical.
In FourFourTwo’s opinion, this reveal means that any information handed out by Arteta will be tricky to base decisions on moving forward.
However, with no win in their last four games, and up against a flying Nottingham Forest in this weekend's Premier League action, it may be time to start considering the merits of having any Gunners players in your side at all.
