FORE RIGHT! A Fragile State of Mind: How Arsenal Have Gone From Quadruple Whisperings to Potentially Nothing at All.
Introduction
Not long ago, the words Arsenal and quadruple were being whispered in the same breath by fans, pundits and even sceptics alike. Now, they risk ending the season with nothing to show for it after being, pretty objectively, the best team in Europe. Arsenal started the season well, you looked around Europe for equals and where did you land? Barcelona, they looked ok. Madrid, short of their usual their standards. PSG looked great but not quite as unbeatable as last season. Bayern were the ones the football world turned to on the 26th of November to really show Arsenal a proper side. Guess what? Arsenal rolled them over; 3-1 winners. At that point many thought “who can stop them?” Time passed and here we are in April, Arsenal off the back of a 2-1 defeat to Bournemouth, at home no less. Knocked out of the F.A. Cup by a Championship side and were absolutely dismantled by City in the Carabao Cup final. In the Premier League, should City win their game in hand, they will be three points behind Arsenal with a huge clash between the sides on the 18th of April.
I watch Arsenal and they just look fragile. So, let’s go under the tent and turn to psychology for answers. What’s going on at the club internally, and what external factors are impacting them? How have Arsenal gone from in conversations for all four trophies, to a spiral so wild it needs a fore right shout?
Pressure’s ominous burden on individuals
Pressure is not a constant. It fluctuates depending on context. It can also get increasingly granular. For example, there’s pressure on every game in the Premier League, make it a derby, pressure increases again. Further still, pressure spikes at key moments within games; a penalty kick, for example. What we see with Arsenal is they are now operating at a near-permanent state of elevated pressure. Every match carries a major implication in the title race. Every moment on the pitch when they’re not winning feels decisive. Every moment when they are winning feels like they’re stuck in limbo; unknowing whether to go for the jugular, or batten down the hatches. Performance doesn’t just decline under these conditions but changes systematically. Within this Arsenal side are classic examples of pressure effects. Studies into pressure suggest that players can still execute difficult technical actions, but their decision making is what changes. This is exactly what we see at Arsenal. For example, against Tottenham, Declan Rice told teammates to remain switched on after they took the lead. He implored with them to focus. The next minute, he tried to take on two Spurs players on the edge of his own area, lost the ball and conceded. When have we ever seen Declan Rice do that? Psychology suggests that pressure increases cortisol, a hormone responsible for stress management. Low to moderate cortisol is needed for elite performance, however, high spikes often correlate to “choking” under pressure. High spikes in cortisol are also linked to higher degrees of self-consciousness. Automatic action is a necessity for elite performing, so when performance stops being instinctive and becomes consciously monitored, it breaks down. “Create something” is replaced by “don’t lose it”. That exact example is seen with Zubimendi in the middle of the park. On a respectable tally for a defensive midfielder of five goals, he hasn’t scored since match week 25. Against Bournemouth it was apparent why. We saw him drop deep to receive the ball, rather than playing it on the half-turn and getting Arsenal out. He was playing the ball back to David Raya, keeping them bound within the shackles of Bournemouth’s press. So, we can explain the individual mistakes that have crept into Arsenal’s performances, but they’re underperforming as an organisation too. What’s happening there?
Organisational instability
Let’s take the Carabao Cup final as an example. At times in the second half, Arsenal had all eleven men behind the ball. This isn’t showing a lack of talent; it’s showing a fragile psychological culture. Partial success, that is: success without overcoming the final hurdle and winning a trophy, creates unstable confidence. Arsenal were brimming with confidence four months ago. Now the tile race is heating up, they search for evidence of their past success and can’t find it. This group (coaching staff included) haven’t won a league title. They have led the league, they have impressed up to now, but they have never secured the title. For Arsenal this creates a ceiling which can’t be reached. They have a belief in their ability, but it’s limited. They are confident for much of the season, but when the pressure increases, their belief system fractures. Arsenal have entered a dangerous cycle. Pressure increases, cortisol spikes in overwhelming volumes, decision-making worsens, performance drops, anxiety increases and pressure further intensifies due to poor results. They’re not only under the pressure of a title race, they’re amplifying pressure organisationally. Creating a sub-optimal environment for successful performance.
External sources
If the internal psychology explains the mechanisms behind their collapse, then external sources can help explain the acceleration of them. Elite athletes have the added pressure of performing within narratives. Fans, media and pundits create stories and projections. At first for Arsenal, this was the fear of expectation. Take TalkSport’s Andy Goldstein “I can see it!” when talking about the quadruple. An article on OneFootball in January was titled “six key reasons to believe Arsenal can win a historic quadruple this season.” Fans and players alike see these stories and think “shit, maybe we can”. Consequently, we see a fear of expectation. Arsenal develop a complex whereby the quadruple has become expected. Thus, rendering anything short of it a failure. As the quadruple begins to slip away, the narrative shifts. Take this ESPN article from the 12th of April, “bottle job? Man City fan celebrates with Arsenal taunt as Chelsea rout narrows title gap”, after a City fan was seen drinking from a bottle with the Arsenal badge on. Now we have a collapsed cultural belief system. No matter what Arteta and the psychologists work on in training; rival fan’s jeers, news articles and home fan frustration embeds a nervousness deep inside the squad like a cancer. Then, of course, there’s the biggest external factor of them all…
Manchester City. Manchester fucking City. As a United fan it pains me greatly to sing their praises. Competing with City introduces a unique stressor. Since the 2021/22 season, over the final ten games of each season, Manchester City have played 43 games. They have lost one. That kind of dominance creates an expectation of near perfection and a perception that any slip up is fatal. Biologically that ignites a stress reaction in opponents. The same fear factor Old Trafford used to have. Alex Ferguson lost only 34 of his 810 top-flight matches at the Theatre of Dreams. A near 96% no loss rate (I couldn’t resist). If we trust that City will be equally as dominant in their remaining seven fixtures. Arsenal are operating within such a compressed margin for error that it appears almost zero.
Connecting the dots
Putting the above together, we land at the following. We are witnessing the phenomenon of emotional contagion. Think of it this way, the term suggests everyone within an elite sporting organisation is connected. There is a unified network of pipes connected to a feeder. Put an emotion in the feeder and it spreads like wildfire. At Arsenal we see pressure’s burden on individuals, a lack of belief due to the scars of previous failings, and external sources acting as a catalyst for further pressure. There you have it, a manifestation of negativity writhing in and amongst the organisation contributing to a slump so drastic it would make a grumpy teenager look happy. But, and there is a but. Thankfully for Arsenal, because the collapse is psychological, that also means it’s fixable.
Stopping the rot
I’m not naïve enough to think that the answers to Arsenal’s problems lie within the next 200 or so words of an article written by a Trainee Sport Psychologist. With that being said (lol) I do have some suggestions based on psychological research that I would be doing with that group of players. For starters, with the impending time constraints attached to turning it round, you’re looking for a quick fix. For that you need to be turning to solution-focused methods. These are methods which don’t necessarily analyse problems (that’s for when we have time) but focus on rapid solutions. I’d be spending time in training on getting players operating under pressure. From Arteta’s side that starts with a reduction in tactical overload. It’s his responsibility to ensure that, even if his ideas are complex, they are communicated to the players simply. They are already operating under stress and struggling for automaticity. Adding complex tactics into the mix will only make things worse. Once the tactics are understood, they need practice under real pressure. For that, you’d have to know exactly what matters to the players. Is there a pool table in their communal area that they love to spend downtime on? Ok, well if you aren’t hitting my targets then that’s gone. The problem with pressure is that you can never accurately replicate matchday pressure in training. Arsenal have to find a way to get as close to it as they can, practicing under those conditions constantly. This stabilises the brain’s response to pressure, almost creating a numbness to it via normalisation.
Additionally for Arteta, it’s up to him to reinstall belief in his players. With the Zubimendi example, he needs to be shown videos of himself ignoring progressive options in honour of playing safe. He needs the backing of his manager telling him to go for the creative pass. Just because the stakes are higher doesn’t mean you change who you are as a player. Changing the way you play ignites that perpetual anxiety cycle. Anxiousness breeds defensive passing, lack of progression breeds frustration in the crowd which in turn feeds back to the players who exhibit poor decision-making (Declan Rice).
The run in
Simply put, Arsenal don’t have a talent problem, they have a major psychological problem. Caught between expectation and fear, they are experiencing a near constant pressure spike. This high pressure leads to elevated stress levels throughout the organisation. Elevated stress leads to impaired decision making on the pitch. Thus, we get the visual effect of nervousness, lack of authority and fragility. In day-to-day life that’s a normal neurobiological response to sustained pressure. The worrying thing for Arsenal fans is, this isn’t day-to-day life, it’s a title race at an elite Premier League side. A combination of poor individual responses to pressure, organisational instability and a painful lack of belief make-up the nucleus of Arsenal’s issues. Add to that immense media pressure, fan frustration, rival jeers and Manchester City’s warm, uncomfortable breath creeping down their neck; we see the rumblings of a collapse. If Arsenal want to turn this round they need to act quickly. The coaching staff need to reduce the cognitive load on the squad, perhaps focusing less on tactical complexities and placing more emphasis on delivering under pressure. I’d suggest a focus on encouraging the players to keep playing with a creative spark rather than looking for the safe options. They need to know it’s a safe space for creativity, something which can only be reinforced by the coaching staff.
What happens between now and the end of May remains an unknown. Personally, I don’t see a world where Arsenal go to the Etihad and get a result. I see them setting up deep and City choking them out. If Arsenal do take the game to City and go on to win the league confidently, I will have to assume Mikel Arteta has subscribed to “Under the tent” and has heeded my advice! In which case, Mikel, I expect a thank you letter with a cheque enclosed in the post!
Source materials
Bransen, L., Robberechts, P., Van Haaren, J., & Davis, J. (2019, March). Choke or shine? Quantifying soccer players’ abilities to perform under mental pressure. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan Conference 2019, Boston, Massachusetts, United States. https://www.sloansportsconference.com/research-papers/choke-or-shine-quantifying-soccer-players-abilities-to-perform-under-mental-pressure
Hackney, A. C., & Walz, E. A. (2018). Hormonal adaptation and the stress of exercise training: the role of glucocorticoids. Trends in Sport Sciences, 20(4), 165–171. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29882537/
Ingham, S. (2023, June 28). Emotional contagion in sport – how are you infectious? Dr. Steve Ingham. https://drsteveingham.com/emotional-contagion-in-sport-how-are-you-infectious/
Lautenbach, F., Laborde, S., Klämpfl, M., & Achtzehn, S. (2015). A link between cortisol and performance: an exploratory case study of a tennis match. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 98(2), 167–173. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2015.10.002
Schmidt, S. C. E., Gnam, J-P., Kopf, M., Rathberger, T., & Woll, A. (2020). The influence of cortisol, flow, and anxiety on performance in e-sports: a field study. BioMed Research International, 2020(1). https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/9651245
Wang, J., Marchant, D., Morris, J., & Gibbs, P. (2004). Self-consciousness and trait anxiety as predictors of choking in sport. Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, 7(2), 174–185. https://doi.org/10.1016/s1440-2440(04)80007-0
Yerkes, R. M., & Dodson, J. D. (1908). The relation of strength of stimulus to rapidity of habit-formation. Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology, 18(5), 459–482. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/cne.920180503