Mikel Arteta is enjoying a near-faultless start to the season with Arsenal and the way he transformed the club has been addressed along with a new issue for the manager
Mikel Arteta couldn’t have imagined a more perfect beginning to the campaign for his Arsenal squad.
The Gunners matched a club-record streak of eight consecutive clean sheets during their commanding 3-0 Champions League triumph against Slavia Prague on Tuesday. Soaring in both European competition and the Premier League, cautious hope that this might finally be Arsenal’s moment continues to grow amongst the faithful in the red half of north London.
An injury crisis and the spectre of previous campaigns will inevitably lurk in supporters’ thoughts, however. Gary Neville foresees a potential stumbling block looming before Saturday evening’s journey to Sunderland, who occupy an impressively lofty fourth position after 10 matches, reports the Mirror.
A recognisable figure will be facing them in Granit Xhaka, who has revealed fresh insights about the impact Arteta had on him – whilst a present Gunners star is providing his manager with plenty to consider. Here’s all the latest news from the Emirates.
Neville predicts dropped points
Just Liverpool and Manchester City have managed to take points from the table-toppers thus far, but Neville believes Sunderland – who remain undefeated on home soil – could join that exclusive club at the Stadium of Light.
The Manchester United icon remarked on the Stick to Football podcast: “They’re awkward Sunderland, aren’t they? I’ll go with 1-1. I don’t really know why I’ve done that – I fancy Arsenal but Sunderland are tough there.”
Arsenal will go into the match as overwhelming favourites based on their recent form, yet this is precisely the type of fixture where they’ve previously stumbled unexpectedly. The encounter therefore offers a genuine examination of their championship ambitions.
Arteta’s training ground revolution
Xhaka will undoubtedly be drawing on the insights he gained whilst working under Arteta to use against the Spanish tactician when Bayer Leverkusen face Arsenal this weekend.
The Switzerland captain heaped praise on his former gaffer ahead of their upcoming reunion, remembering the instant transformation he brought to the training facility from day one.
“I will never forget the first day Mikel came in,” Xhaka told the Athletic. “At the training ground, we had a big room and there were some chairs in there, but the chairs were everywhere – chaos.
“He took all the people who were working in the building into this room and said, ‘Guys, from the outside, you look like this. Chaos.’ So everyone takes a chair and puts it in the right place and he says, ‘I want you to be like this every day.'”.
“You think, ‘Wow,’ he’s started already with these standards – the first day. After that, he was building our mentality, standards in training, pre-training, activation, recovery.
“He brought people in who did a great job. It was unbelievable to work with him because he saw football in a different way.”
Record-breaker Hincapie
Much has been made of Arsenal’s enhanced squad depth, with their defensive options particularly strengthened.
Piero Hincapie, who joined on loan from Bayer Leverkusen in the summer with a £45million option to buy, is one of those who has caught the eye when given opportunities.
He featured in Prague and shattered a decade-long record, becoming the first Arsenal player in the past 10 seasons to have contested eight or more duels in a European fixture and won all of them. That won’t surprise Miguel Angel Ramirez, the manager who handed him his professional debut at Independiente del Valle.
“He was breaking the GPS data every single day,” Ramirez recalled of a 17-year-old Hincapie, now 23, to Sky Sports.
“Piero was more ready. He was amazing physically, a beast, much better than any professional in the first team. He was really impressive technically and tactically as well.”
With Riccardo Calafiori establishing himself in the left-back position and Myles Lewis-Skelly also competing for game time, it creates somewhat of a selection dilemma for Arteta – though one he’ll welcome as the fixture list intensifies following the international break leading into the Christmas period.
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