It was one of the worst kept secrets in football, but as Jack Wilshere's return to Arsenal as their new under-18s coach was announced to staff at London Colney on Monday morning, the beaming faces that greeted it were a welcome sight. Despite having ended his playing days with the Gunners four years ago there is still a real bond that Wilshere shares with many at the club that makes them desperate to see him succeed.
"We - I mean Edu, Mikel and myself - we were so involved in the process, we want to make it work, we want to help him, we want to support him," said academy manager Per Mertsacker. "Luke Hobbs, the head of coaching and all the academy staff were so fantastic because they want to make it work, they know how powerful it is, but they know how much support he will need as well. Everyone will sacrifice to make Jack a success."
Wilshere's return has certainly given a boost to everyone around the club, but it's no spur of the moment decision. In fact it's a move that has been more than nine months in the making.
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It began as the England international was invited to return to train with Arsenal's first team having failed to find himself a club for the 2021/22 season. During this time as well as maintaining his fitness with Mikel Arteta's side, Wilshere began coaching the Gunners' under-17s and began to show promise early on.
"I felt something within him," said Mertesacker of Wilshere's stint working in the academy. "When he kept himself fit with the first team he started training the academy boys at Colney, got really into it, got his A license done, and ever since then we were in touch."
Eventually though Wilshere was able to find himself a club and signed for Danish side AGF in February until the end of the season. The 30-year-old did well in his first experience playing abroad in his career, helping his new side to survive relegation on the final day of the season, but throughout his time in Scandinavia the coaching bug proved impossible to shake.
"To be really honest with myself when I was at Arsenal I really enjoyed the coaching," he said at an event to launch the club's new Inside Hale End documentary. "Then I went to Denmark and slowly started to realise that I was thinking more about coaching.
"When I woke up in the morning I was thinking about coaching and it kind of started to take over. I realised that if the right opportunity came at Arsenal, and it probably only would have been at Arsenal to be honest because they’re my club and I’m so closely affiliated to it (then I would take it)."
That opportunity came perhaps sooner than he would have expected. The shock departure of Arsenal's under-23 and under-18 coaches Kevin Betsy and Dan Micciche to join Crawley Town as manager and assistant manager left the Gunners with a void that needed filling.
It was at this point where Wilshere took the initiative. He began calling Mertesacker '10 times a day for four weeks' to ask for advice on his next step after leaving AGF and the conversations quickly turned to the prospect of him taking over as the club's new under-18s manager.
Having worked in the academy set up last season and trained with Mikel Arteta's first team, Wilshere is uniquely placed to understand the steps required to make the transition from youth football to the senior level, while his time under Arsene Wenger means that he is well versed in the traditions that are so crucial to the revolution in the Arsenal academy in recent years. This becomes abundantly clear as he begins to talk about his coaching philosophies.
“I want a team that dominates possession, tries to win the ball back as high as possible, as quickly as possible," he said to the club's website, echoing many of the components that Arteta himself highlighted as wanting to implement when initially appointed as the first team manager in 2019. "Working under Arsene and people like that, they instilled that in us from a young age. If I can bring that in, along with Mikel's thoughts and ideas, I think that's a recipe for success.
"I was thinking about all the coaches I worked with, including Mikel, and taking inspiration from all of them. I think it's so important that the academy and first-team are aligned. If there's a player who needs to go over and train with the first-team, he has to have the same fundamentals that the first-team players have, and the same language is used between us and them. I think that gives them the best chance.”
Far from simply throwing Wilshere in at the deep end though, Arsenal have taken steps to ensure that his first coaching experience can be as successful as possible. By appointing Adam Birchall as his assistant for the coming season, the club have added a fellow Hale End graduate with 13 years of coaching experience to guide Wilshere through the trickier decisions. With the tools in place and the Arsenal DNA preserved, it will be fascinating to see how the 30-year-old's coaching career progresses in the coming years.
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