Cause and Effect

One

"Oh shut it you, at least you speak the language!" Said Granit.

We joined the rest of the group, just as Thierry called everyone's attention.

"It's nice to be here with you all," he said, glancing around at us. "I know most of you as players, but now I get to know you as real people, which is great, and I'm actually quite excited to start working with you all. Warm up first, and then we're gonna start with some passing drills."

I immediately noticed the differences between Henry and Wenger's methods of coaching us. Wenger, for the most part, had believed in letting us push ourselves to our own limits, and he would silently observe, and discuss with us individually what we needed to work on and change.

Henry was different. If he saw something that could be done better, he changed it immediately, and called us out in front of the whole team. I did not resent the difference, and appreciated his taking a more active role in coaching. However, it injured my pride that he insisted on certain things where he felt himself to be right, and know better than any particular player what was good for them.

Normally, we grouped ourselves by pitch divisions for a lot of our training, meaning the defenders drilled passing together, as did the midfielders, and so on.

"Why are all the forwards working together?" Thierry stopped us, and asked.

"We always do," Alexis shrugged, glancing at myself and Alex Iwobi, who were working with him. "We work together on the pitch, so..."

"I'd prefer to mix you up a little bit," Thierry stated. "Nia, go with Hector, Alexis, go with Granit, and Alex, go with Sead."

"How does that work then?" I frowned.

"Granit's got the long accurate passes in his locker to be able to feed you balls, Alexis," said Thierry. "And Nia, Hector and yourself have the skills to take the ball up the pitch by yourselves. I know you play on opposite sides, but I want you to work on your through balls. Go on, let's go!"

There was no arguing with the boss. We headed over towards the defenders, and switched places with them. I explained the boss's idea briefly to Hector.

"He's getting under your skin, isn't he," Hector stated, looking at me curiously.

"He is a bit, to be fair," I shrugged. "He states his opinions like they're the only valid ones. Maybe we do need to practice our through balls, but the forwards still need to drill passing together."

Hector shrugged as well.

"Maybe he's not planning to play you both at the same time," he suggested.

"I hope that's not his plan," I sighed. "This will take a while to get used to, I guess."

"Aw, come on Nia, he's not bad at all really."

"I guess not," I shrugged. "I just don't like how he works."

Hector laughed, as we began running with the ball. Looking on the bright side, at least working with Hec would really be a test for my pace.

"Trust you to take a strong disliking to someone like him," he said.

"Oh, I think I could easily forgive his pride if he had not wounded mine!" I replied.

We said no more, and I had to put in effort to keep up with the fastest right back in the world. Not everybody can say they're the best in the world at something, and I had a lot of respect for my best friend.

In one sense, our first practice with Thierry went well. In another sense, it didn't. To be fair to him, we were left with no doubt that he knew what he was doing alright. The fresh approach was definitely something we needed at Arsenal. But the way he pushed us around didn't sit well with me. For me, training suddenly became more like boot camp than I ever remembered it. However, football was football, and when you grow up living and breathing the game as much as I did, it takes more than that to put you off it.