Coming out of the 2021/22 season, there was a feeling of disappointment running through parts of the Arsenal fanbase. Having narrowly lost out on that 4th place spot to our North London rivals, questions were starting to be asked of the “project”. Could we really get back into the Champion’s League with this team and this manager? What could be done to take that next step?
As usual, Arteta had the answers and was working behind the scenes to make sure summer 2022 would set Arsenal up to take the Premier League by storm. And now, sitting five points clear at the top of the table, we will be looking for him to do the same with this unprecedented winter break. So let’s take a look back at what we did right with our preseason and how it set us up to have a real shot at a title challenge, and how this midseason break could be similar.
The first, and least obvious, thing that I think may have helped is the comparative lack of traveling that the team needed to do. The preseason tour in America took place all in one timezone and two of the games took place in the same city. So for the main bulk of the preseason, apart from one game in Germany and another at home, the team could settle in and focus on the work rather than sitting on planes and overcoming jet lag. And we’re doing something similar this winter with the warm weather training and friendly games in Dubai.
The next thing that really made a huge difference for our team cohesion was getting our summer signings done early. A lot of us may have been disappointed when we went the whole of August without making a single signing, but that’s because by the time late-July rolled around, we had already signed Matt Turner, Marquinhos, Fabio Vieira, Gabriel Jesus, and Oleksandr Zinchenko.
By getting all of those signings completed so early, we were able to get them integrated during some or all of the preseason so that they could come into the first game of the season already feeling like part of the team. This is something we obviously can’t do this time around as the midseason break and winter transfer window don’t overlap. However, this is still a good time for the likes of Vieira to get some good training time that he didn’t get during the preseason.
Which leads perfectly into my next point; we managed our injuries quite well in the summer. Now, there’s obviously a bit of luck involved when it comes to injuries, however I do think the fact that we had no new injuries pop up in preseason has to be partly down to how well we managed things.
Fabio Vieira, for example, came into the team and was almost immediately spotted with a protective boot on one of his feet. This obviously meant that he couldn’t participate in the main preseason training and get up to speed with everyone else, but it did mean that he was able to avoid a long-term injury and was on the bench ready to play by the third game of the season.
I feel like we’re doing something similar with Zinchenko this winter. There have been reports that he has been suffering from some muscle tightness. So, rather than having him train with the rest of the team and participate in the friendly matches, he’s been doing recovery work to make sure that, come our return to action on Boxing Day, he’ll be fit and ready to go.
The last, and probably most important, thing(s) that Arsenal have done both in the summer preseason and in the winter midseason break is taking these opportunities seriously and coming out with wins. Just to reiterate the mindset that Arteta had going into the summer preseason, he only took one academy kid on the trip to America. In his mind, this time isn’t a chance for the youth players to show off what they can do. This is a time for the team to get the tactics perfected and to show that they deserve to be in the starting eleven come matchday one.
Obviously the other teams are professionals and they aren’t going to go into these kinds of games like they’re an evening kick-around in their backyard. However, the way Arsenal performed in these off-season games shows that the intensity and focus of our players is just at the next level. This kind of attitude, coupled with actually getting results, has given the team the momentum needed to get us to where we are now.
As I write this, we are less than 24 hours from our last midseason friendly against Juventus at home having already won both of our games in the Dubai Super Cup. Let’s hope that we can continue our winning run and ride that wave of momentum into boxing day against West Ham.
