Mikel Arteta admits he was “too focused on tactics” in his early days as Arsenal manager – “How important is the emotional part?”

The 43-year-old has been at the helm of the Emirates Stadium for more than six years, having taken over as manager in 2019, three years after ending his playing career at the club.

“One thing is that sometimes you concentrate,” Arteta said. “Especially in the beginning, there was too much emphasis on the tactical side, so maybe we were cramming in too much information.

“So how important is the emotional part? When a player isn’t executing, why doesn’t he execute?

“He can’t do it, you’re asking him to do something he can’t do, or he has some fears or doubts or doesn’t have enough clarity about why he’s doing certain things.

Arteta reveals what he learned from Wenger at Arsenal

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“Providing that to the player is the most important thing. When the player connects and understands how to better respond to your requests, that’s when you touch the right buttons.”

The main characteristic of Arsenal’s development under Arteta is their strength in set-pieces, especially in attack.

In the Premier League this season, the Gunners have tied for the most goals from set pieces alongside Chelsea, and excluding penalties, the Gunners have scored two more goals than any other team in the region.

The man behind this success is set-piece coach Nicola Jobar, whom Arteta introduced to Manchester City when he was Josep Guardiola’s assistant and brought to Arsenal in 2021.

Arteta acknowledged the need to have different “experts” like Jover within the coaching team, particularly when it comes to things like set-pieces, saying it was “very important”.

Mikel Arteta and Nicolas Jober

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The Arsenal manager added: “Eight or nine years ago, when I brought Nico to Man City with an idea, it was to create something that would be part of something. You can’t separate the game with open play, restarts, set-pieces and direct play, everything is too interconnected.”

“The way you prepare it is so relevant that all the coaches need to buy into it, the players need to buy into it, the facility staff needs to buy into it, because the process needs to be very linked and therefore also very unstable.

“But you need experts who are better than you in certain areas.”

Arteta spent more than three years under Guardiola at the Etihad Stadium between 2016 and 2019 before returning to north London to take up his first managerial job.

He was part of the coaching team that helped City win back-to-back league titles in 2017/18, when they were the only team to reach 100 points, and in 2018/19, when they beat Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool by one point.

Arteta says the past few years have been an “incredible experience”, working with some of the “best” players in history, but Guardiola’s education began long before then.

Arteta talks about working with ‘master’ Guardiola at Man City

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“I’ve been learning from Pep since we first met at Barcelona when we were 15 years old,” Arteta said. “After that, I had the opportunity to work with him and we had many great moments together.

“He was a master, the greatest of all time in my opinion, someone who revolutionized the game and the way we understood it.

“It was a truly wonderful experience to be a part of it, and I am truly grateful.”