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David Hytner
The Guardian,
Tuesday September 23 2008
Arsene Wenger provides inspirational thoughts for his players. Illustration/Guardian
It is not unusual to see Arsenal's players glaze on to autopilot and parrot the mantra about everything being "for the team". Thierry Henry, the former captain, was perhaps the most famous practitioner.
But one of Arsène Wenger's methods in drumming home the message can be revealed. The manager gives his players a motivational handout, which he asks is taken away and digested in the build-up to matches. It is hardly thrilling bedtime reading for those long nights in hotels up and down the country. Yet it stresses again and again the value of the collective - the word "team" appears 12 times on the sheet passed to the Guardian, from the meeting prior to the Premier League fixture at Bolton Wanderers on Saturday - and there is a certain relentless quality to the rhetoric, which is put together with input from the club's sports psychologists.
Wenger has built his success at Arsenal on the creation of strong bonds in the dressing room while he has long shown himself to be open to more scientific approaches. Upon his arrival at the club in September 1996 he erased what was then a drinking culture in the squad and introduced cutting-edge programmes for diet and fitness, training and preparation for games.
While the jargon on the sheet sometimes veers towards the slightly spiritual - "This attitude can be used by our team to focus on the gratitude ... that the team brings to our own lives" - it is largely extrapolated from the simple maxims that Wenger has preached for years.
In among the points, the players were reminded to play in precisely the same uninhibited way as they do at home and to keep going until the very last. Even the most blinkered Bolton supporter had to admit that Arsenal played some scintillating stuff in their 3-1 victory that took them to the top of the Premier League while Wenger enjoyed the benefit of yet another late goal, Denilson's clincher coming in the 87th minute. Had the sheet's inspirational words played their part?
The buzz words also included "belief" and "desire" while one of the recurrent themes was the need to push oneself to the limit and never settle for second best.
Wenger will be unimpressed by an admission from Bolton's Kevin Nolan that he told a team-mate to foul Theo Walcott. "I said to Jlloyd Samuel, 'Give him a little kick and see if he comes back at you'," Nolan said, adding: "We are in danger of losing that side - the roughing up of people."
The Guardian,
Tuesday September 23 2008
Arsene Wenger provides inspirational thoughts for his players. Illustration/Guardian
It is not unusual to see Arsenal's players glaze on to autopilot and parrot the mantra about everything being "for the team". Thierry Henry, the former captain, was perhaps the most famous practitioner.
But one of Arsène Wenger's methods in drumming home the message can be revealed. The manager gives his players a motivational handout, which he asks is taken away and digested in the build-up to matches. It is hardly thrilling bedtime reading for those long nights in hotels up and down the country. Yet it stresses again and again the value of the collective - the word "team" appears 12 times on the sheet passed to the Guardian, from the meeting prior to the Premier League fixture at Bolton Wanderers on Saturday - and there is a certain relentless quality to the rhetoric, which is put together with input from the club's sports psychologists.
Wenger has built his success at Arsenal on the creation of strong bonds in the dressing room while he has long shown himself to be open to more scientific approaches. Upon his arrival at the club in September 1996 he erased what was then a drinking culture in the squad and introduced cutting-edge programmes for diet and fitness, training and preparation for games.
While the jargon on the sheet sometimes veers towards the slightly spiritual - "This attitude can be used by our team to focus on the gratitude ... that the team brings to our own lives" - it is largely extrapolated from the simple maxims that Wenger has preached for years.
In among the points, the players were reminded to play in precisely the same uninhibited way as they do at home and to keep going until the very last. Even the most blinkered Bolton supporter had to admit that Arsenal played some scintillating stuff in their 3-1 victory that took them to the top of the Premier League while Wenger enjoyed the benefit of yet another late goal, Denilson's clincher coming in the 87th minute. Had the sheet's inspirational words played their part?
The buzz words also included "belief" and "desire" while one of the recurrent themes was the need to push oneself to the limit and never settle for second best.
Wenger will be unimpressed by an admission from Bolton's Kevin Nolan that he told a team-mate to foul Theo Walcott. "I said to Jlloyd Samuel, 'Give him a little kick and see if he comes back at you'," Nolan said, adding: "We are in danger of losing that side - the roughing up of people."
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