As Arsenal got off the coach at the US Naval academy for day two of their pre-season training camp in Baltimore, the sheer scale of the operation was unmissable. The club had hired out separate buses just to transport all their training kit from their inner city hotel out to the training campus, while tens of coaches and staff also travelled for the session. Undeniably though, the largest contingent of the sizeable Gunners group on Tuesday was the players.
Mikel Arteta surprised many by naming a 33-man squad for the tour to America. Other clubs like Tottenham have decided to leave big name players who seem to have no future at the club behind as they travel overseas to prepare the coming campaign, but Arsenal have chosen the opposite approach.
The likes of Runar Alex Runarsson, Hector Bellerin, Lucas Torreira and several others seem almost inevitably on their way out of north London, but here they are still in Baltimore. Despite their fate though, each of these players has maintained a level of professionalism that Arteta is keen to reward.
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"We have made it practical so far," he said of what it's been like to manage such a large group with only limited minutes to share around. "At the same time we have really, really good people - they have given everything when they play, when they don't play, when we are not using them and for me to send a different message to the group was to be very very inconsistent with what we demand.
"So they're in the group, or they're not. They're part of us, they're contracted to the club, we want the best out of them and at the moment they're with us, so we're going to treat them like this."
Arteta has shown in the past that if players conduct themselves in the right manner, then he is willing to offer them a place in his plans in return. Eddie Nketiah failed to start a Premier League game for Arsenal until April last season, but was consistently singled out by Arteta for his conduct in training before eventually being rewarded with a run in the team and a new contract. It was a similar case for Mohamed Elneny, who made just seven appearances in all competitions before getting his chance against Chelsea in April.
The Egyptian was also rewarded with an extended stay at the club and is now viewed as valuable experience in the young Gunners dressing room. Arteta has not ruled out the possibility for history to repeat itself this year, too.
"The message is: this is a different season and everybody has a clean start," he said. "Show us what you can do on the pitch, how you're going to behave with your team-mates, are you going to make the car faster - yes or no? If you do, you have a chance to be here."
Of course the unfortunate casualties of this policy are Arsenal's young players. Reuell Walters is the only Gunners academy player to have made the trip to the States, although Flo Balogun could perhaps be just about placed in that category too.
There had been excitement to see the likes of Salah Oulad M'Hand, Lino Sousa, Brooke Norton-Cuffy and in particular Charlie Patino, but instead they find themselves back in England with the under-21s, who take on Dulwich Hamlet in a pre-season friendly far away from the glamorous surrounding of the M&T Stadium that will host Arsenal's clash with Everton on Saturday night.
Seeing the club's young stars get a chance to impress with the first team has become a pre-season staple for the Gunners. The likes of Gabriel Martinelli, Emile Smith Rowe and Bukayo Saka all burst on to the scene during impressive runs in friendlies, but the current generation will not be afforded the same opportunity.
Arteta admits that it was a tricky decision to take this course of action, but having brought many of them with him to last week's training camp in Nuremberg, he is satisfied with the level of first team exposure they'll get this summer.
"It was (a tough decision to leave so many academy players behind) but it was impossible," he told football.london. "So we have Reuell here, we have Flo as well and we have tried to balance. But we had a lot of young players as well in Germany, so I think we have the right balance."
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