Arsenal’s Premier League campaign this year was nothing short of impressive. To the surprise and shock of not only Arsenal fans, but footballing fans nationwide, Mikel Arteta delivered a genuine title challenge to the red side of North London. For most of the season, the Gunners found themselves sitting pretty at the top of the tree and in the end only just lost out to Manchester City.

So, what has changed over the last year? In this article we’ll explore the Netflix Arsenal ‘All or Nothing’ documentary; the motivational methods Arteta uses to inspire his players to win; and some views and opinions from Arsenal fans.

Amazon’s ‘All or Nothing’ documentary follows Arsenal Football Club home and away during their 2021/22 season granting viewers extraordinary behind-the-scenes access to life at Arsenal. With great footage from the Emirates Stadium and the London Colney training ground, cameras also follow the team through various cup competitions and domestic matches up and down the country.

The documentary gives viewers a unique insight into the club and how it is run on a day-to-day basis; as well as filming before, during and after matches in a way that shows both the energetic highs after a crucial victory and the emphatic lows after a defeat.

Fans are able to appreciate and admire the players in a way that they have been unable to for several years.

Mikel Arteta, who was under heavy pressure to deliver over the season, is shown to be a beacon of positivity for the club, giving fans confidence in his approach. Throughout the eight-part documentary, Arteta comes across as an extremely passionate mentor who firmly believes that his methods will create a winning team.  

At such a young age (thirty-nine at the time of filming) for a manager of one of the country’s most renowned teams, Arteta is shown to possess the qualities to rise to the top of the management rankings.

Mikel Arteta’s team talks were a popular talking point after the release of the documentary, with many fans mocking him online for the techniques he used and for the delivery of them. From doodling pictures of hearts and brains, and bringing in the club photographer at half-time, to playing music during a training session, Arteta’s techniques were fascinating to watch to say the least.

So what were Mikel Arteta’s methods and techniques for motivating his players?

At one point he tells his players that when he was a child he was the patient for Spain’s first open-heart surgery. The point he is trying to deliver here is how high-performance sports teams and medical teams are both motivated by the love of what they do. But in the film two of the players – Ainsley Maitland-Niles and Bukayo Saka – look confused about the analogy.

After this, Arteta draws a graph on a white board to show his emotions after his side were dismantled 5-0 by Manchester City. He tells the players that the dot on the X-axis represents the point when he felt: “Dead, with fears and insecurity.”

But then he places a second dot higher up and says that this is what his emotions are now, and explains that the improvement is down to the fact that the players have cheered him up over the previous week with their solidarity and togetherness, even after back-to-back losses.

During the episode featuring the North London Derby fixture at the Emirates Stadium, Arteta draws a picture of a heart and a brain, pre-match, and tells  the players they need to use both during the match, with the heart representing passion and the brain representing decision making.

In the same episode Arteta brings the chief photographer Stuart McFarlane into the dressing room to deliver an emotional pre-match team talk.

In Episode three we see Arteta use an extremely unusual approach to preparing his players for an away match against Liverpool. To replicate the atmosphere of Anfield, Arteta runs the training session with speakers blasting out Liverpool’s anthem “You’ll Never Walk Alone”.

In Episode four viewers are given another taste of Arteta’s artistic napproach, when he draws another diagram, this time of a road, labelling it with the words ‘journey’ and ‘destination’.

In the video below I discuss Arteta’s methods with sports psychology student Johanna Kuosa from the University of East London.

Was the documentary insightful or a mockery?

As Amazon has already churned out a plethora of behind-the-scenes documentaries on sports clubs, this type of programme must be very popular with audiences. The platform’s films have featured other Premier League teams such as Manchester City, Tottenham and Crystal Palace; as well as cricket and American football teams.

But is this one on Arsenal successful?

The answer is essentially yes. Although Arsenal fans might find the last episode a tough watch (it covers the team’s failure to reach Champions League football while gifting fourth place to bitter rivals Tottenham), the Gunners documentary has been highly praised by Arsenal fans. And more specifically, many fans have hailed how Mikel Arteta is portrayed on camera. The Arsenal series has been labelled as the best of the All or Nothing ‘brand.’

@Simon49Arsenal tweeted: “That documentary has really opened my eyes on Mikel Arteta. The manager and the club have proved me wrong.”

@Ater477: “The Amazon documentary shifted the narrative around the club and transformed Arteta and Arsenal’s image to the world, making fans, new and old, fall in love with the football club again.”

@TynaSharell:  “Mikel Arteta is the linchpin of Amazon’s latest documentary. The Arsenal manager reflects on his intensity, approaches to personal development and evolving relationships with fans. He has been a coach for 3 years.”

However, Arteta was mocked by rival fans and some critics for the unusual methods he used during his pre-match and half-time team talks. The Guardian’s Stuart Jeffries claimed the Arsenal manager wasn’t fit for the job and used a somewhat harsh comparison. “Mikel Arteta is like a supply teacher out of his depth”.

A major outcome of the documentary is that fans have reconnected with their club again and that a ‘feel good’ factor has been brought back to the Emirates Stadium and Arsenal.

As fan Dan Potts put it: “You can see from the documentary of what’s going on behind the scenes. I had no idea this was happening behind the scenes. This side look together and this manager has some really good things about him, as well as the coaching staff and the players. There’s a good feel around the club – something we haven’t had for a while.”

Arsenal fans can be proud of the football they have witnessed from their young team this season. After the collapse of last year in the failure to reach a Champions League spot, it is clear Mikel Arteta has transformed his team into a strong Premier League outfit. In the space of a year, Arteta has changed the Gunners from a team that was heavily mocked into a force to be reckoned with.

So is that success down to Arteta’s new techniques? Have these innovations changed the team’s collective mindset? Or did the nineteen other Premier League teams have an ‘off-season’?

Whatever the answer is, it is clear that there has been a change at Arsenal over the past year and that these changes could lead the club into a very successful period!