The club has been making some big moves off the field lately.
In the smart room there could be Aaron Ramsey, wearing a virtual reality headset, and replaying his most recent game on a virtual 3D pitch. Perhaps, on the 40m running track that goes down the middle of the state-of-the-art gym, Alex Iwobi is working on sprint technique with Ainsley Maitland-Niles.
Petr Cech might be in the cryo chamber, Laurent Koscielny in the yoga and pilates space. In one meeting room Sven Mislintat is addressing members of his new network of scouts. In another, Darren Burgess is discussing with his team some of the players’ latest GPS data — a field that he helped pioneer.
That’s the vision, anyway. Same old Arsenal? Not really any more. It has happened stealthily, often quietly, but 2017 was the club’s biggest year of behind-the-scenes change since Arsène Wenger arrived in 1996. Because Wenger stayed on a fresh two-year deal when his contract came up for renewal in June, the cliché has remained of Arsenal as an institution meandering along — and a continuation of the varied first-team results and performances of recent seasons has furthered that impression, shared by many.
But it may be wrong. 2018 is a year where the effects of huge alterations to the structure around Wenger are expected to start being felt. The January transfer window could be a beginning, with Mislintat coordinating recruitment for the first time.
Today, Wenger will surpass Sir Alex Ferguson’s record for Premier League matches as a manager when he oversees his 811th top-flight game, at West Brom. There was scepticism when Ivan Gazidis, Arsenal’s chief executive, told a supporters’ meeting in April that Wenger, after so long a time, could be a “catalyst for change” but the actions of Wenger and Gazidis since have borne out — at least to some extent — that promise.
A mini-revolution has come in two tranches. One involves hiring new personnel. After two decades working with a small, stable team of lieutenants around him, suddenly Wenger is surrounded by new faces. Mislintat, Burgess, Huss Fahmy and Raul Sanllehi are pivotal appointees, all arriving from June onwards.
Burgess, an Australian, is director of high performance. He was headhunted from a similar role at Port Adelaide, a leading Aussie Rules club, and previously worked at Liverpool, where he was held in high regard. Mislintat is head of recruitment, having been lured from Borussia Dortmund, where his key finds included Mats Hummels, Robert Lewandowski, and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Ousmane Dembele — both the kind of upcoming French superstars-to-be in which Wenger used to specialise.
Fahmy, previously legal and commercial expert with Team Sky, joined to specialise in contracts, and Sanllehi has an interesting title and brief. He is head of football relations with responsibility for transfer negotiations and closing player deals, as well as accompanying and supporting Gazidis on Uefa committees. The Spaniard was a Barcelona transfer fixer for 14 years, closing the signing of Luis Suarez while Arsenal botched their own attempt to recruit the Uruguayan from Liverpool.
The changes have seen some of Wenger’s oldest aides, such as Steve Rowley and Dick Law, depart, but it is understood that Wenger hired the new men in conjunction with Gazidis. Burgess, one of the first fitness specialists to use GPS monitoring, and an expert in data, arrived because Wenger recognised that his team — in their heyday, the Premier League’s best for conditioning — needed to catch up. “Darren felt that Arsenal were lagging behind and he was concerned about high injury rates pretty regularly. Arsène had come to the conclusion that changes needed to be made and he told the club to find the best person in the world. And I believe they’ve found him,” said Dr Peter Brukner, Burgess’ former Liverpool colleague.
Other, lesser — but still highly significant — staff changes have been made at Arsenal during the past six months. Jens Lehmann arrived as first team coach, Per Mertesacker was announced as academy manager from 2018-19, Sal Bibbo joined as a goalkeeping coach and Richard Allison was brought in as performance nutritionist. They complement older hires made in what Gazidis regards as a much longer drive towards modernising Arsenal, such as David Priestley, who came from Saracens to address the mental preparation of Arsenal players, and Des Ryan, whose background was in Irish rugby and who works at Arsenal’s academy, specialising in youth physical development.
Taking a footballer from young schoolboy to athlete capable of competing in the Premier League is a challenge that Wenger believes is becoming ever more difficult — and the physical readiness of Maitland-Niles and Iwobi when they came into the first team has impressed hugely regarding Ryan’s work. In total, over the past four years, Arsenal have doubled their football staff to around 160 — an extraordinary volume of change for one club.
“We have been working hard in recent years to drive the club forward in every way through the recruitment of outstanding leaders across all our first team, academy and women’s team activities. This involves additions to our capability in all aspects of our football operations — coaching, scouting, analytics, medical and fitness support, psychology, education and player welfare,” Gazidis said.
“In addition, we have invested £40m in the development of state-of-the-art facilities at London Colney, Hale End and Boreham Wood. This is part of an ongoing process of investment in people and facilities to ensure that we create the right environment for success and to develop our position at the forefront of the game.”
That £40m investment has seen complete revamps of the academy, at Hale End, which reopened in April, and Arsenal Training Centre (ATC) at London Colney, where work was completed in time for the start of this season. The ATC features a new player performance centre, replete with that virtual reality smart room and running track as well as other features such as an ultra-modern gym, where the weights and exercise machines store players’ profiles and remember their previous workouts.
The running track is to allow players’ speed to be tested and measured, and for working on sprint technique. In the virtual reality suite a player will stand, wearing their headset on a mini-pitch, and see 3D match footage. The technology allows players to revisit match situations and explore the different options they might have taken, or even experience games from the point of view of an opponent or teammate. It can also be a training tool, especially for young players, helping them rehearse what the speed and intensity of Premier League football is like. “Multiple thousands” were spent on the smart room, say the club, and it was supplied by a Dutch company, Beyond Sports, who work with PSV Eindhoven, NFL teams and in professional cycling.
Add in Arsenal’s ground-breaking purchase of their own sports analytics company, StatDNA, in 2014, and there is confidence in the club’s hierarchy that they are dealing with the challenge of super-rich rivals in the right way. “The desire for improvement runs through the club and that’s why the nonsense spouted [about Arsenal drifting along] is so wide of the mark. We know we haven’t got as much money as some, so what we need to do is be better at everything, in every field — and that’s what we’re attempting,” a source said.
In the background is the acknowledgement that a post-Wenger future is coming at the club and the changes are also seen as part of the preparations for it. Arsenal are conscious of the way that Ferguson’s retirement caught Manchester United cold. Wenger will be touching 70 years of age when his contract expires; blocks for a new Arsenal are dropping into place and he will have helped fashion them. Now for just a bit of a tweak to results.
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