Jack Wilshere revealed he once turned to Nicolas Jover for set-piece advice, as he hailed the "culture" change at Arsenal.
Jover first worked with Mikel Arteta at Manchester City under Pep Guardiola, before making the move to north London in 2021. His influence as set-piece coach since then has been clear. In the 2023/24 season, Arsenal scored 16 goals from corners, matching a Premier League record.
Wilshere's request to Jover
Wilshere was Under-18s head coach at his former club during that period and he was pleasantly surprised when his request to tap into Jover's brain proved successful.
"He's a top guy," Wilshere told The Overlap. "When I was in the academy I said to him, 'Nico, help me and my staff. Do a meeting for us.' I don't need to know everything. Obviously he's not going to give his secrets away. 'But can you help us?' And he did. It's not always like that, you know what it's like first team and academy. First team are always really, really focused. He gave us his time."
Set-piece culture at Arsenal
Set-pieces have been a key part of Arsenal's armoury in recent seasons and Wilshere gave an insight into how that has materialised. Training sessions focused on those situations are given the same priority as work on team shape, with players switching between drills taken by Arteta and Jover.
"It's a culture thing," he said. "They would use the academy players. On this pitch would be Mikel taking the team through structure [drills] with ten Under-18s in the shape of West Ham, for example. Then on the other side, Nico was doing a walk through of set-pieces. Imagine doing that in your day? The players would just think, 'Oh I'm not doing that, what's going on here?' What helps is that they are really successful with it and score loads of goals. But it was a culture thing that changed completely. It's another level."
Arteta's influence on Wilshere
Wilshere and Arteta were team-mates under Arsene Wenger for five years. When the ex-England international was without a club and deciding what to do at the end of his career, Arteta invited him back to train with the Arsenal first team. Wilshere was also given responsibility with the academy teams as he worked through his coaching badges.
In his time away from Arsenal, Wilshere admitted he had doubts over the "process" that Arteta referred to in the early years of his reign. However, Wilshere trusted the club were on the right path once he got firsthand experience of the job Arteta was doing.
"When I got there, after a week, I saw it," Wilshere said. "I saw it straightaway. He was working with 35-year-olds, 28-year-olds. He taught me no matter what, coach them. They want to be coached. I'm talking about coaching body position to receive, first touch, timing to move. Stuff that you would have been taught when you were 14, 15. But he would go into it all the time. You'd arrive in the morning and he was highlighting that in a meeting. You could see all of this individual stuff was building into a team structure. He was intense and would drive the players. As much as there is loads and loads of details, what he taught me was don't miss the basics. How hard you need to compete, how hard you need to run."
