Royal Airforce Pilots and Pickpocket Mayhem: Has Mikel Arteta Gone Mad?

Royal Airforce Pilots and Pickpocket Mayhem: Has Mikel Arteta Gone Mad?

It is fair to say that Mikel Arteta’s six year stint in charge at the Emirates has been punctuated with … unusual management decisions. The Spaniard, now in his seventh season (or phase seven, for all you Twitter/X warriors), has pursued every possible avenue to bring success to North London, and on occasions has thought outside the moving van, let alone outside the box.

However, yesterday it seemed as if Arteta had finally lost the plot entirely, after news broke that he was set to bring in a number of RAF pilots in a bid to revolutionize the way he communicates with his players.

🚨 Mikel Arteta plans to invite a team of Royal Air Force fighter pilots to Arsenal to improve the way he communicates with his players & has talked internally at the club about becoming more ‘efficient’ in his use of words, reports @JBurtTelegraph.

Arteta: “The British fighter… pic.twitter.com/HxhJ7fwglb

— afcstuff (@afcstuff) September 30, 2025

In his own words, Arteta said that what they do is “life or death. I’m sure they don’t use 20 words or phrases 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.”

Intriguing words indeed, and his reasoning is not entirely unfounded - RAF pilots, and more broadly military personnel in general, are some of the finest communicators on the planet.

However, sooner or later Arteta will learn that there is only so much his players can perfect—they’re not exactly going to be shouting “Bogey on your six!” when Ayoub El Kaabi is pressing the backline in Arsenal’s Wednesday night UCL clash with Olympiakos.

Mikel, when we said haram ball, we didn’t mean it literally

— Obong (@bornobong) September 29, 2025

And seeing as this is not being the first ploy that Arteta has used to give his team the psychological edge (and likely not the last), we thought there was no better time to discuss one of football’s most creative thinkers.

The Matter at Hand

Firstly, to the elephant in the room. Arteta, alongside rival manager Pep Guardiola, has long been viewed as one of the most creative coaches in the game, constantly searching for unusual ways to leverage the upper hand away from their competitors.

This most recent foray into the extracurricular seems his roguest yet - while you can understand the sentiment, it isn’t as if footballers don’t know how to communicate. Phrases such as “man on,” “go to,” and “get tight” are all frequently used on the field of play and, in my humble opinion, are already short enough to get the point across quickly.

'Do RAF pilots know how to deal with a set-piece?' 💬

Jamie O'Hara's reaction to Mikel Arteta wanting the RAF to help improve communication at Arsenal ✈️ pic.twitter.com/Gtd8RwggEe

— Sky Sports News (@SkySportsNews) September 30, 2025

However, ever the perfectionist, Arteta had a well-thought-out (almost practiced) response: “How specific can we be? I will bring them in and say ‘I want you to analyze our process for three days, how we communicate and how we do in training, and I want to get better at this.”

Even Arsenal fans have taken this somewhat surprising update with a hearty amount of jest, with one replying, “Arsenal reinvents man-on! We will be there.”

Frankly, the RAF pilots will have better luck in the VAR control room, as more than a bit of clarity is needed there, whereas when faced with a football team full of consummate professionals, they can only teach them so much. Besides, pertaining to the phrase “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” there is no guarantee that this military visit will pay any dividends at all - some will likely ignore the advice, believing the system they have in place is already perfectly effective. After all, the Gunners lie just two points off the top of the Premier League.

A History of Madness

Arsenal fans can attest that this is far from the first time that Arteta has taken unusual measures to streamline the way he operates.

In August of last year, while at a team dinner, Arteta secretly hired a number of pickpockets to walk around stealing his players’ valuables on the sly - once they had finished eating, and Arteta asked them to empty their pockets, there would have been more than a few bemused and somewhat panicked faces along the table.

🚨🍽️ Mikel Arteta hired a team of professional pickpockets whilst at dinner with Arsenal players... 😳

They went round tables pinching phones, wallets etc. At the end of the meal, Arteta asked players to empty their pockets, with several missing key items!

This was to teach… pic.twitter.com/hXL9Sopm7T

— EuroFoot (@eurofootcom) August 8, 2024

This, he said afterwards, was to teach his squad the value of being “alert and prepared” at all times. While the message may seem clear, it is flawed in the fact that pickpockets don’t typically make their way onto the Emirates football pitch in the midst of competitive games.

Moreover, players enter an entirely different zone when they step inside the white lines, fueled by adrenaline and instinct - they could not be more alert and prepared if they tried, for there is simply too much occurring on the pitch for their minds to be anywhere else.

We’ll call that one a miss.

Another infamous example was the occasion when the former Gunners midfielder brought a lightbulb into the dressing room as a prop. Ever the “mad scientist,” Arteta used it as an imaginative metaphor. He stated that by itself, the lightbulb is nothing - it is when it is connected that it really shines.

Throwback to when Mikel Arteta motivated his players by turning on a light bulb:

"Today I want to see a team that is connected because a bulb by itself it's nothing."💡⭐pic.twitter.com/UnXsaXxAq4

— The Touchline | 𝐓 (@TouchlineX) May 8, 2025

While the metaphor was almost certainly aimed at players aiming to do too much by themselves, it sounds more like a far-too-complicated riddle in my mind - of course, mental games are a part of football, but any psychological challenges are typically aimed at opposition teams, not your own players.

There are more than a handful of other examples: he brought speakers to Arsenal’s Colney training ground, playing “You’ll Never Walk Alone” in a bid to prepare his players for the atmosphere of Anfield; juiced a lemon and squeezed it, emphasizing that you can always get a little bit more out; and has even cultivated a miniature olive tree, which he now brings to team meetings as a representation of the club’s heritage and deep roots.

Some of the most interesting tactics Mikel Arteta has used to motivate his players 👀🧠 pic.twitter.com/yUFcCrfPe1

— LiveScore (@livescore) September 29, 2025

All very meaningful and poignant, but what have these unusual schemes actually done for the club?

Masterclass or Disaster-Class?

Well, the answer is double-edged - we’ll start with the positives: Arsenal have infinitely improved when compared to the haphazard, error-prone side Arteta inherited in December of 2019, and under his guidance, they have started to regularly compete at the sharp end of both cup competitions and the league (even if they had to sack Gunnersaurus along the way).

Arsenal have made famous mascot Gunnersaurus redundant as part of their cost-cutting process, according to The Athletic 💔 pic.twitter.com/TFUdTFtGb5

— GOAL (@goal) October 5, 2020

However, Arteta’s careful planning has resulted in just one major honor, this being the COVID-affected 2020 FA Cup, which they lifted thanks to a Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang brace, and a further pair of shocking refereeing decisions (yes, I’m still sour about Mateo Kovacic’s red card).

In the five years since, it has been a story of so close yet so far for the Gunners—runners-up in the Premier League in all of the last three seasons, competitive against the best sides in Europe in the Champions League, and beating PSG on XG (sorry, I had to), they are surely just one step away from success.

Arsenal have got 13 points from 6 Premier League matches this season. 📈

They've faced Liverpool, Newcastle and Man Utd away and also played Man City at home.

Mikel Arteta is integrating a lot of new signings, has had to deal with a number of key injuries already and his team… pic.twitter.com/rSTStG7WgW

— Football Tweet ⚽ (@Football__Tweet) September 30, 2025

The question is, do Arteta’s wild strategies push them to the pinnacle, or are they just a sideshow that hinders the team more than they help?