Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain has lifted the lid on how Mikel Arteta's "crazy" attention to detail is driving Arsenal's Premier League title bid.
The Gunners are fighting on three fronts as they aim to end a near six-year trophy drought, having lost the Carabao Cup final last weekend to Manchester City.
Arsenal are currently favourites to win the Premier League, Champions League and FA Cup after years of steady progress and improvement under Arteta, who in 2019 returned to the club where he spent time as a player for his first managerial role.
Oxlade-Chamberlain arrived at the Gunners during the same summer as Arteta, with the pair playing together in north London for five years before the latter hung up his boots, and the now-Arsenal manager's passion for tactics was clear under Arsene Wenger's reign.
Speaking on In The Mixer, brought to you by Sky Bet, Oxlade-Chamberlain said: "[Arteta] started analysis meetings for us because Arsene comes from a different generation. It was all about us, and if we take care of what we’re meant to take care of, we should win.
"But when it got to the point where you’re playing [Man City] or we have a big game, Mikel was our boss. We want to know what they’re doing from a corner. We didn’t really do that.
"So Mikel sort of forced that in as a player that we started watching the opposition more, whoever it was we wanted to know. Because before we just see it on the paper, on the board and the boss [Wenger] would just start drawing lines."
Oxlade-Chamberlain, now at Celtic, recently returned to Arsenal to train, following the expiry of his Besiktas contract, and was able to see for the first time how Arteta operates was the main man in charge.
He added: "I think now you can see, and obviously I’ve just trained with them boys before I went to Celtic for three months and some of the stuff I was seeing and learning, it was an eye opener.
"For me, it’s what I always imagined that Pep [Guardiola]’s team was operating on.
"Because even at Liverpool, we were maybe a bit more simple and our philosophies were different, but I can kind of see that stuff that Mikel’s doing.
"Every detail really is crazy. And as a player, he probably took more pride in that than the average player while still playing."
