The transition from player to coach can be difficult. There are plenty of challenges to overcome - having to change things from the sidelines instead of being able to directly influence them on the pitch, finding the balance between tactical philosophy and the limitations of your players... The list could go on.
For Jack Wilshere though, the toughest thing to get used to since taking over as Arsenal's under-18s coach has been something rather more mundane. "All the emails," he tells football.london. "I was like ‘what’s going on here?!’"
His phone is still buzzing non-stop. During the course of the interview, he even receives a call from Ray Parlour. But with time Wilshere is learning to adapt to the day-to-day demands of his new life. In doing so he has rekindled a spark he didn't know he'd lost.
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"I love it, honestly," he says of his new coaching position. "I’ve said this before, but it’s given me back the real deep love for football and didn’t know I’d lost it to be honest. I came back here last year and I was coaching a bit, training a bit. Then I had a decision to make. Do I want to go to Denmark? I had a few offers from around Europe, but I chose Denmark and that was tough, going over there, playing in a different country. I loved it, I loved the country, the people, but I didn’t love it as much.
"But when I came back here, and it might be because it’s Arsenal, I feel like people here genuinely care about me, which is nice. Everyone wants to be around people who care for them. The coaching side, when I first came, that was my big thing. I loved it. On the grass, trying to beat teams, trying to work out a way to play against teams, trying to develop an individual."
It could have been so different for Wilshere who admits that his initial forays into coaching left him with a lukewarm enthusiasm far from the burning passion he seems to have now.
“When I did my coaching badges [at Arsenal] it was my B Licence in 2017, I only did it because Per (Mertesacker) had been offered the academy manager job but he needed his B and then A to get it," he says when recounting his journey to this point. "I was in 'the bomb squad', I called it. I had come back from Bournemouth, broke my leg, been told I could leave and had a year left on my contract. I was like ‘I’m not in the squad or playing, I’ll do it with you Per’.
"I went to Hale End and did it but I didn’t really have that much interest. It was almost ‘let’s do it now before your career ends’. Even after the B Licence I wasn’t thinking I was going to go into coaching. It was when I started doing my A Licence and came back here [last season] that inspired me. The want has changed. I didn’t want to do it before, now I want to do it and want to get better."
As he seeks to deliver on that desire to develop himself as a coach, Wilshere is fortunate to have a Premier League table-topping manager just a few pitches over at London Colney. That front-row seat to Mikel Arteta's training sessions is one he is keen to take as often as possible.
"I wouldn’t want to go to Mikel every day, saying ‘what do you think of this? What do you think of that?’ He’s got his own things going on," he says. "But just being around Mikel, watching him coach, watching him set up the team the way he does. I actually love it, just going over there the day before the game watching the team and watching Mikel do it and then bring it to life. And obviously we’ve had a lot of success this year with that. So yeah, being around it and being able to watch it is enough."
Part of what has set Arteta aside from his competitors is his willingness to go to extreme lengths to engage his players. The peep behind the curtain offered by Amazon's 'All or Nothing' documentary series showed that the Spaniard was willing to show off his artistic skills, pump music into training sessions and bring lightbulbs into the dressing room all to give his team the edge. Wilshere admits he's taken inspiration from this outside-of-the-box thinking, but he's not willing to give away any trade secrets just yet.
"I have done some quirky things which I won’t tell you!" he says. "I think when I was coming through there wasn’t really that side of coaching going on – Arsene never brought a lightbulb through or played music before a game – but part of me feels it’s genius. With this generation, with Instagram, they’re looking at motivational videos and things to get them motivated all the time. I think it works. Mikel has done a great job at dipping different things and building around that.
"So with the lightbulb thing he was talking about connecting and building different energy and the fans. If you look at that and break it down, what he’s really trying to say is make sure you show the fans you’ve got energy, fight and passion. That’s how I see it. How you can get that across to the players is a big part of it. The basics of being passionate, having pride, if you go into a duel winning a duel, that’s important because it brings the fans with you. So it’s little things and the idea is to bring energy.
"On a matchday my process would be to give the players two hours before what we’re doing tactically, in possession, out of possession. Then four or five minutes we get everyone in a group and try different things, I’m not going to tell you what they are – some of them have worked some of them haven’t.
"There’s loads of different ways. You can talk about tactics and stuff, but when you have a connection with your players like Mikel does and you can see that he really cares, then players buy into that and they’ll do anything you want really. You can tell them to build with three at the back or four at the back, but it’s deeper than that."
For all the innovative motivational techniques though, there is definitely room for something a little more old school. Academy coaching obviously requires a lighter touch than first team level, but Wilshere admits that he's not been afraid to be stern with his players when he feels it's necessary.
"Yeah, it’s been tough," he says of some of the more difficult conversations he's had to have. "I think that is down to getting to know the person. People s the day of the hairdryer has gone, but I don’t think it has. Some players actually respond better to that. Some players want to be told.
"When I was young, (Steve Bould) was my coach and he would say to me: 'You’re good at this, you’ve done that really well.' But I wouldn’t hear that. So now I have to understand: not every player is like that. Some players will only hear: 'oh you were really good at that today' and then when I say: “but you need to do more of this”, they don’t hear that. They just want to hear: I’m good, I’m good, I’m good. So I think being honest at the right times is key.
"Some players you can be brutally honest with. Some players you need to dress it up a little bit more. If you can make the player feel like the programme – what we’re doing – is really going to help him. Then you get buy-in."
It is this desire to understand his players that comes across the most when talking to Wilshere. This seems to be the biggest lesson he has taken from his playing career.
"It’s interesting, right, because I just think of the bad experiences I’ve had with coaches – and that’s probably the biggest thing: that they weren’t able to connect with the players," he says. "And it’s something I take for granted. I don’t always think: 'Oh my God, my connection with them is really good' But on the other hand, if I haven’t got a connection with one individual, I really feel that. And that really bothers me.
"That’s happened a few times this season and then you need your staff, your assistant to take over with that player and try and help him. I don’t really see it when it happens naturally. But when it doesn’t happen, you feel it."
There have been plenty of occasions where Wilshere has been able to put that into practice already this season. In the fifth round of the FA Youth Cup his side were 2-0 down against Watford at half time and looked to be heading out of the competition. It was at this point that Wilshere's bond with his players helped turn things around.
"I was sitting outside the dressing room and I was talking to my staff," Wilshere says recounting the evening. "They were saying: we need this, this, this. I was thinking: 'I’m going to go after them, I need to get into them'.
"I walked in there and I could just see they were down, they were dead, finished, gone. I didn’t say anything tactical – in possession, out of possession – I just said: “Lads, look around this room. Look at the individuals in this room. It can happen, we can be 2-0 down – that’s fine – but we’re one goal away from winning this comfortably.” And then I just saw them sort of lift and my assistant said a few words and it was a completely different team."
The Young Gunners would go on to win the game 4-2 courtesy of four goals in just 12 minutes. It's one of many rollercoaster matches that have led Arsenal to an FA Youth Cup semi final with Manchester City at the Emirates Stadium on Tuesday night. It's poetically symmetrical for Wilshere who beat the exact same opponents at the exact same stage en route to winning the competition in 2009. The Arsenal under-18s boss has certainly changed a lot since then, but he'll be hoping the result stays the same.
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