‘It was at Anfield’: Footage shows Mikel Arteta trying to prepare his Arsenal team for Liverpool with YNWA

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New footage shows Mikel Arteta playing YNWA for his Arsenal players ahead of an Anfield trip. He wanted to prepare them for Liverpool.

A clip from Amazon Prime’s All or Nothing series shows Mikel Arteta taking a strange approach to training. The Arsenal boss attempts to prepare his players for a trip to Anfield by having them work in the atmosphere.

That involves speakers in training that blast You’ll Never Walk Alone while the players perform drills. Arteta did try and explain the method to his madness, admittedly.

“The game was going there and then suddenly, I could only see Red shirts flying around,” said Arteta. “The game was passing all over me and I could not react.

“People would say ‘what is he doing?’ and I am like ‘I cannot do it’. I cannot react physically, emotionally, I cannot cope – everything goes too fast.

“I only had that feeling in my career once and it was at Anfield.”

Mikel Arteta playing YNWA

Now, we know this happened last season but it’s difficult to say whether it actually worked or not. Arsenal played at Anfield twice – the first time they were pumped 4-0 in the Premier League. The second time they saw out a 0-0 draw in the EFL Cup (but lost on aggregate).

So either way, Arsenal didn’t get the result they hoped. One game certainly went better than the other, however.

But whether it worked or not, it’s fantastic to see the respect paid to Liverpool. Just the fact that they’ve got a top-six boss trying something so out of the box shows the reputation of Jurgen Klopp’s side right now.

Arteta knew that Anfield would get to his players – countering that was the only way he could win. Or as it turned out, not even that worked. Let’s see what he cooks up this time around.