Mikel Arteta used an old tweet from Ivan Toney to motivate his players before their rematch with Brentford last campaign, the latest episodes of All or Nothing have revealed.
Arsenal lost their opening game of the 2021/22 campaign, getting beaten 2-0 away to Brentford, with Sergi Canos and Norgaard both getting on the score sheet.
After the match, striker Toney tweeted, ‘Nice kick about with the boys’ – a comment which not only wound up Arsenal supporters but also angered their manager too.
When the reverse fixture rolled around in February, six months later, Arteta put the tweet on the dressing room tactics board and used it to ginger his players.
‘Before I go, because it’s still in my stomach and I have managed to keep it for four months, five months, six months,’ said the Spanish coach, pointing to the tweet on the screen.
‘This is Toney after the game when we played at Brentford. You know what he did? You know his tweet? Nice kick about with the boys this afternoon.
‘So today they play in our house, guys there is only one team on that f***ing pitch – and it’s us! Only one team, it’s like they don’t play football. We take that f***ing ball, we take the game, we go for it and let’s f***ing win this game!’
The team talk appeared to do the trick, with the Gunners getting revenge at the Emirates and beating Brentford 2-1 – while Lacazette even mimicked Toney’s tweet on social media after the game.
Similarly, Wolves midfielder Ruben Neves had also taken a swipe at Arsenal saying they celebrated their away win at Molineux as if they had won the Premier League title.
Due to a weird fixture quirk as a result of postponed games, the two sides faced each other again two weeks later and, while Arteta referenced Neves’ remark, this time he chose to fire up his players by using Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
‘I was going to tell you what the Wolves players said after the game about us, but I’m not going to do that,’ he says.
‘Did you see what happened between Russia and Ukraine guys? How do you feel about that? It’s terrible. How lucky we are to be here guys. I want you to play like tomorrow could be taken away from you, because it can happen. In this f***ing world this can happen.’
Arteta also gives another team talk before facing Liverpool in which he reminisces about how he met his wife, while a preview for next week’s last three episodes shows the Arsenal boss holding up a lightbulb in a dimmed dressing room and asking his players to shine as the light.
Episodes 4-6 of Amazon Prime Video’s All or Nothing: Arsenal series will be available to stream on Thursday 11th August
