Football writer Sam Cunningham analyses Mikel Arteta’s exhaustive rebuild of Arsenal and how he has taken the club to Premier League glory for the first time since 2004.

Five days before he was appointed Arsenal manager, Mikel Arteta sat in the opposition dugout at Emirates Stadium with Manchester City, unable to comprehend what he was witnessing.

Arteta, an Arsenal player from 2011 to 2016, had lifted the FA Cup twice as captain then lived through the late-Wenger turbulence, but this felt different.

Arsenal were three goals down by half-time, and they finished the match in front of thousands of empty seats and in an eerie quiet.

Arteta, assistant to Pep Guardiola, the manager he would spend the next half-decade trying to dethrone, was stunned by how far the club had fallen.

When Arteta was handed the job of reigniting Arsenal, reconnecting with the supporters became a priority.

It has been an ongoing, sometimes difficult process, but the results have been unmistakable

Supporters lined the streets to welcome the team coach into Emirates Stadium before producing one of its greatest atmospheres as Arsenal reached a first UEFA Champions League final in 20 years, and at crucial points on the way to ending a 22-year wait for the Premier League title.

Attention to detail is one of Arteta's defining traits. He requested the tunnel cover be removed at the Emirates so that both teams could hear the noise of the crowd before kick-off – inspiring his own and unsettling opponents.

He also made North London Forever the club’s matchday anthem, a song now woven into their resurgence.

Motivational master

Arteta's meticulousness extends to every inch of the club.

Motivational messages cover the walls at their London Colney training base. Next to one reading "Together we make history" on a wood-slatted wall, Arteta installed a black silhouette of a Premier League trophy – only lighting it after winning the title. New signings were shown the silhouette and told exactly why it was there.

In his seven years at Arsenal, he has become the master of motivation, cultivating a high-performance culture.

In May 2023, Arteta introduced a chocolate Labrador (below) to the training ground, assigning a staff member as her primary carer. "Her name is Win, we all love winning and Win needs a lot of love," Arteta told the club's official website at the time.

"So the love for Win, that was basically the feeling."

The players adore Win and take turns walking her.

Around the same time, he had a 150-year-old olive tree planted in the grounds. "We have to look after those roots every single day, make sure they don’t get poisoned, don’t get damaged and it’s in the right condition," he said.

Tailoring training sessions

Arteta thinks carefully about the right messages to convey, tailoring training sessions depending on the moment.

In one session, he played a TikTok edit on a big screen while the players trained beneath it. In another, they formed a circle balancing pens between their fingers while moving with the ball to sharpen concentration.

He has been pleased to see the players taking the initiative and generating their own ideas.

Energy was a recurring theme in the All or Nothing Amazon documentary, when cameras were allowed behind-the-scenes during the 2021/22 season.

After losing three of their first five games, ahead of a north London derby, on a flip-chart Arteta drew a cartoon heart labelled "passion" and a brain, with "clarity" written above, holding hands, and a flag-holding Arsenal fan in the background.

"Guys, we have to play with our big hearts," he told the squad. "At the same time, we have to play with a big brain – and these have to work together." They were 3-0 up after 34 minutes and won comfortably.

Before other games, he invited Stuart MacFarlane, the club photographer of 30 years, to deliver an impassioned speech, and he once told the players about the heart surgery he underwent as a child.

On one occasion, Arteta aimed to galvanise his players ahead of an important away fixture at Liverpool by blasting the Reds' anthem "You'll Never Walk Alone" over a PA system at the training ground.