Xhaka recalls Arteta ‘chaos’ analogy on first day of Arsenal training – ‘It was unbelievable’ | OneFootball

Granit Xhaka has recalled how Mikel Arteta used chairs to illustrate the “chaos” at Arsenal on his first day as Gunners manager ahead of their reunion on Saturday.

Arteta succeeded Unai Emery at the Emirates in December 2019 and Xhaka made 147 appearances under him before moving to Bayer Leverkusen in the summer of 2023.

The Switzerland captain returned to the Premier League this summer as Sunderland paid £12m for his services and he’s played a key role in lifting the newly-promoted side to fourth in the Premier League table, seven points behind his former club ahead of their meeting at The Stadium of Light on Saturday evening.

Xhaka had endured a difficult time just before Arteta’s arrival, with the midfielder swearing at the Arsenal fans as he was substituted in a 2-2 draw with Crystal Palace in November 2019 and stripped of the captaincy as a result, having only been awarded the armband by Emery two months before.

His Arsenal career appeared to be over at that point but Arteta brought him back into the fold and got the very best out of the midfield before he moved to the Bundesliga.

Xhaka has nothing but praise for the work Arteta has done at the club and told The Athletic about a typically strange metaphor the Spaniard used on his very first day as manager at the club to show how he wanted to turn “chaos” into order.

“I will never forget the first day Mikel came in,” Xhaka said. “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.”

Arteta has won just one trophy as Arsenal manager, when they beat Chelsea in the FA Cup final in 2021, but they look well set to add to their collection this term, sitting pretty at the top of the Premier League and with a 100 per cent record from four games in the Champions League so far.