Wilshere reveals how Jover set-piece secrets shaped Arsenal's 'culture'

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Jack Wilshere has lifted the lid on how Nicolas Jover's set-piece coaching helped transform Arsenal's training culture, revealing he once turned to the Spaniard for advice while working as the club's Under-18s head coach.

Jover joined Mikel Arteta's staff in north London in 2021 after the pair first worked together under Pep Guardiola at Manchester City. His impact on Arsenal's dead-ball routines has been significant, with the Gunners scoring 16 goals from corners during the 2023/24 season, matching a Premier League record.

Speaking to The Overlap, Wilshere explained how he approached Jover directly while coaching Arsenal's academy side, despite the usual divide between first-team and youth staff. 'He's a top guy,' Wilshere said. '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.'

Wilshere added that the gesture was not always typical of how senior staff treat academy coaches. '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.'

A shift in approach

Wilshere described how set-piece work at Arsenal is treated with the same priority as tactical shape sessions, with players rotating between drills run by Arteta and Jover during training.

'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.'

Trusting the process

Wilshere and Arteta were team-mates for five years under Arsene Wenger. When Wilshere was without a club later in his career, Arteta invited him to train with the first team and later gave him responsibilities within the academy setup as he worked through his coaching badges.

Wilshere admitted he had previously harboured doubts about the 'process' Arteta spoke of in his early years in charge, but said those doubts disappeared once he saw it in action. 'When I got there, after a week, I saw it,' he said. '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.'

Wilshere's comments offer a rare behind-the-scenes look at the detail underpinning Arteta's methods, and how set-piece coaching under Jover has become embedded in Arsenal's daily working culture, as reported by The Standard.