The first three episodes of All or Nothing: Arsenal will be available to stream on Amazon Prime on Thursday 4 August
Usually when Amazon‘s cameras are granted exclusive behind-the-scenes access to a Premier League football club for a season there tend to be more twists and turns than a rollercoaster at Thorpe Park: a favourite destination of Bukayo Saka’s, it transpires early on in the Arsenal edition of All or Nothing.
The series begins amid a backdrop of unrest. A simmering cocktail of resentment and disillusionment at the Kroenke family’s running of the club and Mikel Arteta’s management of the team is evident early on. “Being an Arsenal fan right now sucks,” is YouTuber turned boxer turned rapper KSI’s input.
A shift in mood takes place as a young team begins to find its feet, but by the end of the third episode, trouble is brewing once more with club captain Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang finding himself out of Arteta’s starting XI.
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Here are five things we learned from the opening three episodes of All or Nothing: Arsenal…
Saka on dealing with racist abuse after Euro 2020 and adjusting to fame
After missing a penalty in England’s shootout defeat against Italy in the Euro 2020 final last summer, Bukayo Saka, along with team-mates Jadon Sancho and Marcus Rashford, was subjected to racist abuse on social media.
“People do not care about how you feel as a human being,” says Arsenal legend Thierry Henry, who describes the young winger as a “hero” for taking the penalty. Perhaps surprisingly, the documentary doesn’t stay on the topic of racism for long but instead focuses on the pressure that high-profile young players face.
“Before I could just do normal things but I can’t really do them anymore,” Saka tells team-mates and fellow Hale End graduates Emile Smith Rowe and Folarin Balogun in the Arsenal canteen. On being mobbed by staff outside of Waitrose he adds: “Bro, I had my hood on, my mask like this [up to just underneath his eyeballs]. I don’t know what more I can do.”
Saka admits that he hadn’t thought about off-the-field matters as a youngster coming through the academy, that his focus was purely on football, but accepts that it is a price worth paying for “living his dream”.
‘Silent Stan’ absent but Josh Kroenke makes his presence felt
As was the case with the Tottenham version of this documentary series, the manager gets the most of the air time with Arteta a constant presence. In the first episode, however, he shares screen time with Josh Kroenke, a director on the club’s board and son of “Silent Stan” Kroenke, the club’s unpopular owner.
It feels like a deliberate ploy on Arsenal’s part to attempt to smooth relations with the club’s fanbase following the Super League fallout (which is more or less skimmed over).
Kroenke Jr, who has the look of a man who might implore you to buy a car from a certain website that rhymes with “pinch” at any moment, responds “where should I start?” with a chuckle that goes on slightly too long when asked, “what’s the most challenging thing about running a football club?”.
Kroenke accepts that Arsenal’s decision to try and break away from the Premier League “upset a lot of people” and that the subsequent fallout “stings”. He stresses that work is going on “behind the scenes” to rebuild bridges.
Many fans will contest that they were burned long ago.
Arteta’s interesting pre-match team talks, featuring the club photographer
The allure of programmes like this is that they take you behind the curtain, offering glimpses of dressing room dynamics and team talk technicalities. A lot of footage is dedicated to Arteta talking to his players and delivering messages before, during and after a match.
Clearly, Arteta puts a lot of thought into them. In the first episode, Granit Xhaka labels his manager a “freak” before clarifying “but in a positive way” because of his attention to detail and that comes across in his interactions with the squad. He tries to tap into their mental psyche, introducing new elements to his team talks, seemingly before each game.
Ahead of the north London derby, long-serving club photographer Stuart Macfarlane is entrusted to deliver an expletive-heavy message and before a match against Leicester, Arteta calls on his players to close their eyes and rub their hands together in order to create a “bubble of energy”. They won on those occasions, although blaring You’ll Never Walk Alone out over the speakers as players trained before a trip to Anfield didn’t have the same effect: Arsenal lost that one 4-0.
The most interesting dressing room snippet comes not from Arteta but Aubameyang after the Leicester win. At that point still Arsenal captain, he essentially takes the piss out of his manager, calling on the squad to rub their hands together again before starting a chant of “two days off” which results in Arteta temporarily morphing into a David Brent figure and ceding to the striker’s demand.
Given the striker lost his place in the team, was stripped of the captain’s armband and then allowed to join Barcelona shortly after over concerns over his attitude, the scene seems quite telling.
The conversation that convinced Arteta to sign Ramsdale
Of all the players in Arsenal’s squad, Aaron Ramsdale is the one that the cameras gravitate towards the most at the start of the series. The 24-year-old joined Arsenal for £30m from Sheffield United last summer in a deal that took many fans by surprise and he admits that upon joining he turned off the comments on his social media profiles to block out the noise.
Ramsdale made an instant impact at Arsenal though, taking Bernd Leno’s place in the team and becoming a fan favourite almost immediately. Arteta and his coaches clearly think highly of the shot-stopper and the Arsenal boss recalls the moment that convinced him to bring him to the club.
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“Since the moment that I had on the phone first of all with him and then with his father, I was so impressed and I said ‘this is the one'”, Arteta reveals in the third episode. “He was very confident, full of enthusiasm, he was really open about how he has developed over the last few years, how he wants to make his mark at the club.”
Despite being a new arrival, Ramsdale quickly becomes the most vocal member of the dressing room and looks close to tears after conceding a late goal against Aston Villa which cost him a clean sheet. His parents also make an appearance in episode one: keep an eye out for some interesting headwear from Ramsdale senior…
Tierney opens up on mental health
By far the most important conversation of the series involves Kieran Tierney, who opens up about his own mental health and the difficult topic of male suicide – one that has affected him personally.
Tierney joined Arsenal from Celtic in 2019 and reveals that he was “really struggling” and suffered from “terrible” homesickness upon moving from Glasgow to London.
“I’m not saying I was ever in a bad, bad place where it was suicidal or that,” he begins. “But my friends have been. Two or three of them have committed suicide, lost their lives. You’re with these people and you don’t know a thing because they’ve not spoke [sic].
“I feel a certain responsibility to try and help as much as I can because I know how it feels to be in a certain place. It was hard.”
It’s a difficult watch, but Tierney – like others in sport such as UFC fighter Paddy Pimblett – deserves our admiration for speaking up. According to Samaritans, men in the UK are over three times more likely to die by suicide than women. Well done to Tierney for using his platform in a positive way.
If you are struggling with suicidal thoughts, or are struggling with your mental health in other ways, you can contact The Samaritans for free on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org.