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Former Arsenal player Granit Xhaka has just revealed a brilliant anecdote about Mikel Arteta that would show fans why their trust in the manager is justified.
Xhaka will play against Arsenal officially for the first time since leaving the club to join Bayer Leverkusen in 2023. He then joined Sunderland in a surprise move in the 2025 summer transfer window, and is now set to play against his former club.
Speaking in an interview with The Athletic before Arsenal play Sunderland at Stadium Of Light on Saturday, Xhaka was talking about his old manager, and how he changed things at Arsenal when he first joined.
Granit Xhaka's Mikel Arteta anecdote at Arsenal makes so much sense
He said: “I will never forget the first day Mikel came in. 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.”
That is such a good anecdote to carry. It was obvious from the start that Arteta was going to be an exceptional coach. He worked under Pep Guardiola for all those years, and there are a lot of things that stuck with him on his move to London.
Since then, he has obviously added his own spin to it. There are so many good things he has of his own now, and it is brilliant to see.
It is not just the tactics. It is the way he connects with his players, and the way he instills mentality, training and focus to improve his players every day.
Arteta was also asked about him in his press conference before the game on Saturday, and he also had great things to say about Xhaka.
He said: “I loved every minute that we spent together. When I joined, he was in a special moment in his life and career, and between all of us, we tried to guide him, to give him a different perspective, and make him feel loved and valued, and he responded in an incredible way."