Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain Sees Klopp-Level Mentality in Arteta’s Arsenal Squad

Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain says Arsenal now show a Klopp-level mentality under Mikel Arteta, heaping praise on the club’s culture and coaching detail.

Eight years after leaving Arsenal, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain has walked back into London Colney and found a club that feels almost unrecognisable. In a good way.

The 32-year-old, currently training with the Gunners while he looks for his next move, says the Arsenal he’s returned to bears almost no resemblance to the one he left behind in 2017.

In fact, he sees echoes of Liverpool’s title-winning mentality – something he felt first-hand under Jurgen Klopp – surfacing in north London.

How Arsenal Have Changed Since Arsene Wenger Era

In an interview with The Athletic, Oxlade-Chamberlain says the difference now is “massive”.

Back in Wenger’s final years, the club felt tight-knit, almost old-school, with a small number of staff and a slightly improvised feel around the fringes.

Coming back now, he found something closer to an elite modern performance machine than the genteel football club he once knew.

Arsenal’s staff numbers have ballooned. So have the specialist departments: nutrition, sports science, analysis, conditioning – areas that existed before but are now present on a much larger scale.

And everyone’s aligned. He talks about a club where everyone, from player care to data analysts, seems to be pulling in the same direction, rather than the detachment that marked the final Wenger years.

“Everything has got bigger,” he says. “The number of staff, the number of players, the way they do nutrition and everything else… everything is geared towards elite performance.”

How Arteta’s Arsenal Compare to Klopp’s Liverpool

Naturally, Oxlade-Chamberlain compares the mentality across three versions of his career: the old Arsenal he left, the Liverpool he joined, and the Arsenal he has returned to.

The Arsenal of 2017 had talent, perhaps too much talent and not enough edge, but in The Ox’s telling, the belief was always slightly conditional.

He says they “sort of believed” they could win big games, but not with the conviction of the team he experienced at Liverpool.

“Maybe we just didn’t have the right ingredients,” he says, hinting at the intangible stuff that tends to get labelled “mentality” when a team wins and “weakness” when they don’t.

Liverpool under Klopp was different. It wasn’t swagger or arrogance; it was inevitability. Even against Manchester City, he says, there was a sense within the squad that they would find a way.

It wasn’t down to one star player but a collective refusal to blink – defending “like our lives depended on it” and training in a way that meant the performances rarely dipped below a certain standard.

What matters is that he now sees the current Arsenal edging into that territory.

He hasn’t been in the first-team dressing room, as he’s been mostly training with the academy, but everything around the squad, from the intensity to the structure to Arteta’s hyper-detailed sessions, signals a club operating at Liverpool’s level of focus.

“They’ve got everything you need to be really successful,” he says. “Now they’ve just got to go out and do it.”

Oxlade-Chamberlain on Arteta’s Coaching

Oxlade-Chamberlain has worked under some top managers – Wenger, Klopp, and even a cameo under Solskjaer in Turkey. Yet he keeps circling back to Arteta’s detail as something that surprised him.

The sessions feel intense but controlled. The messaging is clear. The focus on what he calls “the less sexy stuff” – pressing traps, defensive transitions, set-piece precision – is constant.

He’s careful not to reveal specific routines, but the implication is obvious: Arsenal now win games through layers of prepared detail, the way Liverpool once did with their set-piece coaches, throw-in specialists and endless tactical rehearsals.

It’s the sort of behind-the-scenes work fans only notice when it’s missing.

Which Arsenal Players Have Impressed Oxlade-Chamberlain?

Oxlade-Chamberlain points to Declan Rice, who he played with at West Ham, as someone who has moved into “another stratosphere” since arriving at Arsenal.

Martin Odegaard also comes up quickly in conversation; Oxlade-Chamberlain admires the quality in his game but just as much the way he leads through example and sets the standards.

He also heaps praise on Gabriel Jesus, who has been added to Arsenal’s Champions League squad after returning from an ACL injury.

Of course, the former Manchester City man is someone he already knew well as an opponent but has come to appreciate even more while watching him train during his recovery.

“What a player he is,” he said. “I’ve played against him many times, but just seeing how he trains, the way he works, how sharp his finishing is, he’s really impressive.

But he has also been struck by the level of the club’s up-and-coming generation. Max Dowman, who has now picked up an ankle injury, immediately caught his attention.

“When I saw [Dowman] for the first time, I was thinking, ‘Let’s see what all this talk is about,’” he says.

“Right from the off, you could tell he is a proper player, the way he controls the ball and the way he moves. And from what I see, he’s a really good character, mature in the way he carries himself.”

Ethan Nwaneri and Myles Lewis-Skelly have made similar impressions, not just through their technical ability but through the maturity they show day-to-day around the group.

For Oxlade-Chamberlain, who knows what it is to break through at 16, the way they handle themselves suggests they have the character to match their talent.

Liverpool vs Arsenal Mentality: What Has Changed?

The comparison Oxlade-Chamberlain draws is simple enough that it almost sounds like a criticism, but it’s really a compliment to how far Arsenal have come under Arteta.

The old Arsenal were talented but brittle. Liverpool under Klopp were intense, together, and most importantly, they fully believed they could beat anyone on any given day.

Arsenal now operate with a structure and mentality that look very much like the latter rather than the former.

“Whatever they’re doing, they’re moving in the right direction,” he says.

They have the framework now, he says – the culture that turns well-coached teams into serial winners. The next step is the one that matters most: turning it into trophies.

Oxlade-Chamberlain is training, keeping sharp, and looking for his next club. But in doing so, he’s had a rare glimpse of two eras of Arsenal separated by nearly a decade, and he’s seen the transformation first-hand.