Mikel Arteta 'has WhatsApp group with other coaches' to discuss Arsenal tactics

Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta is in regular contact with other coaches from across other sports as he tries to find an edge. Arteta is attempting to bridge the gap at the top of the Premier League and deliver Arsenal ’s first title since 2004 and is exploring every avenue available to him.

The Gunners head coach has made headlines over the past few years for embracing unusual methods to get the most out of his players. Arteta has hired a pickpocket to target his players, drawn a heart and a brain on a flipchart in the dressing room, allowed the long-serving club photographer to take a team talk, played Liverpool chants through a speaker and used a football freestyler to embarrass his players.

And although he has been frequently mocked by the fans of other clubs, Arteta remains undeterred as he aims to go one better than their three straight second-place finishes. Speaking at the ‘Lead Better, Live Better Summit 2025’ earlier this month at the Londoner Hotel, the Spaniard revealed he was thinking of hiring RAF fighter pilots to teach his players how to communicate better.

And The Telegraph reports that he is part of a WhatsApp group of other leading coaches as part of his interest in improving his leadership skills. In it, Arteta is joined by legendary basketball coach Steve Kerr, ex-England rugby union head coach Eddie Jones, Green Bay Packers head coach Matt LaFleur and NBA hall-of-famer George Karl.

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The group's influence has been obvious recently after Arteta borrowed one of Jones' calling cards to re-categorise his substitutes as "finishers". His tactic has born fruit already, too, with Leandro Trossard and Gabriel Martinelli among his replacements to make an impact in games.

Asked at the talk where his curiosity takes him, Arteta replied: “To many places. It’s a constant improvement. I can wake up one day and say ‘my process on match day is not good enough.

“Why we are communicating to the players, starting from between us coaches to the analysts, to the other guys, to actually how the message is delivered. I don’t like it. Who is the best at that?’”

That thought led him onto explaining the fighter pilot theory. “So, the British fighter planes, for example,” Arteta said. “I will get in touch with those guys, how they communicate, because that is life or death. I’m sure they don’t use 20 phrases or 20 words if there is one word. Don’t say ‘nah, the wind is coming this way, now you have to turn left’, because boom, dead. So, it will be one word.”

He added: “So what is it? How specific can we be? How clear can we be? And bring them [the pilots] in and say ‘I want you to analyse our process, three days, how we communicate, how we do that in training, how we do that and I want to get better at this’.

“And be vulnerable, you know, and get it smashed and say ‘you guys are terrible at this, you need to improve’ and so ‘OK, we are going to get better at this’. Getting to understand these people, how they think, how they operate, how this relates to Formula One, how this relates to something else and try to improve on that.”

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