Arteta reveals he heats dressing rooms and delays meals to stop Arsenal players panicking

Mikel Arteta deliberately sabotages his Arsenal squad’s comfort in pre-season, turning up the heat in dressing rooms, removing massage beds, and delaying meals and bus trips to ensure players do not panic when real disruptions occur during the season.

The Arsenal manager opened up on his unconventional methods after the club’s flight to Naples was held up by three hours due to air traffic control issues this week. Rather than treating the delay as a problem, Arteta framed it as exactly the kind of scenario he has been conditioning his squad to handle.

“I love those challenges. I try to clear them in pre-season. So when they happen, we already experience them and we already know,” Arteta said. “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’s so much traffic — I don’t want the players, but not only the players, the staff as well, panicking.”

The Spaniard was clear about the intended response when things go wrong. “Adapt to it. Okay, we have another two or three hours on the plane, how can we use them? Play together, spend some time together, sleep, use it — but certainly don’t complain and then use it as an excuse, because that’s not helpful at all.”

When asked whether he would go as far as deliberately delaying a flight, Arteta acknowledged that particular trick remains beyond his reach — for now. “We can’t get that done yet, but just delaying the meals, delaying the transport, taking a different route. We’ve done many things: made the dressing room hotter, more difficult, more challenging, less beds. Because we’re going to have to adapt to different contexts, and we’ll try to anticipate it.”

This is not the first time Arteta has deployed unusual psychological methods with his squad. He previously hired a team of pickpockets to target players during a team dinner, and last season introduced a bonfire ritual at the training ground, asking players to write down their fears on paper and throw them into the flames — a motivational exercise built around the word “fire”.

Arteta’s attention to detail and willingness to manufacture stress in controlled environments has become a hallmark of his management style at Arsenal, where he has built a squad capable of challenging at the top of the Premier League.