Arsenal news: Mikel Arteta's training ground stir as £45m 'beast' gives him a headache

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Mikel Arteta couldn't have dreamt of a better start to the season for his Arsenal side. They equalled a club-record run of eight successive clean sheets in the 3-0 Champions League victory away at Slavia Prague on Tuesday.

Flying high in Europe and the Premier League , quiet optimism that this could finally be Arsenal's year continues to build in the red half of north London. The ghosts of seasons past will naturally be in the back of supporters' minds, though.

And Gary Neville envisions a potential banana skin on the horizon ahead of Saturday evening's trip to Sunderland , who sit a mightily impressive fourth in the table after 10 games played. A familiar face will be lining up against them in Granit Xhaha, who has shed fresh light on the impression Arteta made on him - while a current Gunners star is giving his boss food for thought.

Only Liverpool and Manchester City have taken points off of the league leaders so far, but Neville can see Sunderland - who are unbeaten at home - joining that select group at the Stadium of Light.

The Manchester United legend said on the Stick to Football podcast: "They’re awkward Sunderland, aren’t they? I’ll go with 1-1. I don’t really know why I’ve done that – I fancy Arsenal but Sunderland are tough there."

The Gunners will enter as heavy favourites given their recent record, but it is the sort of game where they've been at risk of dropping points in the past. The fixture therefore presents a true test of their title credentials.

Xhaka will no doubt be using the knowledge he accrued from working under Arteta against the Spaniard for Sunderland this weekend. The Swiss international sang his former boss' praises ahead of their latest reunion, recalling the immediate impact he had at the training ground on his first day in charge.

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"I will never forget the first day Mikel came in," Xhaka told the Athletic . "At the training ground, we had a big room and there were some chairs in there, but the chairs were everywhere - chaos.

"He took all the people who were working in the building into this room and said, ‘Guys, from the outside, you look like this. Chaos.’ So everyone takes a chair and puts it in the right place and he says, ‘I want you to be like this every day.’

"You think, ‘Wow,’ he’s started already with these standards - the first day. After that, he was building our mentality, standards in training, pre-training, activation, recovery. He brought people in who did a great job. It was unbelievable to work with him because he saw football in a different way."

Much has been made of Arsenal's improved squad depth, with their defensive ranks particularly bolstered. Piero Hincapie, who arrived on loan from Bayer Leverkusen in the summer with a £45million option to buy, is one of those who has impressed when called upon.

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He started in Prague and broke a decade-long record, becoming the first Arsenal player in the past 10 seasons to have contested eight or more duels in a European fixture and won all of them. That won't come as a surprise to Miguel Angel Ramirez, the manager who gave him his professional debut at Independiente del Valle.

"He was breaking the GPS data every single day," Ramirez recalled of a 17-year-old Hincapie, now 23, to Sky Sports . "Piero was more ready. He was amazing physically, a beast, much better than any professional in the first team. He was really impressive technically and tactically as well."

With Riccardo Calafiori making the left-back spot his own and Myles Lewis-Skelly also vying for minutes, it presents something of a selection headache for Arteta - albeit one he'll be glad to have as the fixture schedule ramps up after the international break heading into the festive season.

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