Hour after hour and day after day, Mikel Arteta and Raheem Sterling would stay behind on the training pitches after the other Manchester City players had gone inside. This was a time before Sterling had established himself as one of Europe’s great goalscoring wingers, and these were the sessions that helped him to become a true predator.

Together, Arteta and Sterling worked with a specific focus: the final movement required to score a goal. The darting runs, the clever positioning, the calm finishing. Again and again and again, until it became second nature.

It was in the autumn of 2017 that Pep Guardiola, the City manager, revealed that these one-to-one sessions were taking place. “Mikel is working many hours and days after training,” Guardiola said. “Raheem has wanted to stay there, to improve. He knows a striker has to score goals and he has to do that if he wants to achieve the next step.”

In the previous season, the 2016-17 campaign, Sterling had scored 10 goals in all competitions for City. He wanted more. As he and Arteta put in those hours after training, the numbers rose at a startling rate: 23 goals in 2017-18, followed by 25 in 2018-19. By the time Arteta left for Arsenal in December 2019, Sterling was halfway through a campaign that proved to be his most prolific, with 31 goals in all competitions.

Given how closely they worked together at City, it cannot be a coincidence that Sterling’s most productive years in Manchester came when Arteta was on Guardiola’s staff. In his first full season with Arteta, Sterling’s tally of goals and assists rose by 32 per cent. In his first full season after Arteta’s departure, that number dropped by 33 per cent.

It is little wonder, then, that Sterling was so keen to reunite with Arteta at Arsenal. When the opportunity to swap Chelsea blue for Arsenal red presented itself late in the transfer window, Sterling made it absolutely clear that Arsenal was the club he wanted to join. There was an offer to move to Saudi Arabia, in a deal that would have doubled his wages, but Sterling had no interest in it. His eyes were on Arsenal and Arteta.

In the short term, Sterling will look to make his Arsenal debut in Sunday’s north London derby at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Over the medium term, he will hope that reuniting with Arteta, and returning to a more stable footballing environment, could help him to rediscover his best form.

There will be those who feel that Sterling, now 29, is too far beyond his best to ever return to those heights. Indeed, in his two years at Chelsea, he never produced the consistent threat that had defined his seven seasons at City. He admitted in May 2023 that he was enduring “one of the lowest points in my career”.

Sterling’s doubters will also argue that he has endured a heavy workload over the last decade, making an average of 47 club appearances per season, and that it must have taken its toll on his body.

In his senior career, Sterling has already played more than 45,000 minutes for club and country. By contrast, his Arsenal team-mate Leandro Trossard, who is four days older than Sterling, has played fewer than 30,000 minutes. These are two players who are almost exactly the same age, but Sterling has significantly more miles on the clock.

Sterling has been able to handle such a load, though, because he has always worked so diligently on his body. He has been willing to experiment in the past — even using judo to build his strength — and has worked in one-to-one sessions with Ben Rosenblatt, England’s former lead physical performance coach.

By moving from Stamford Bridge to the Emirates Stadium, Sterling has swapped chaos and instability for order and structure. In two years at Chelsea, he played for Thomas Tuchel, Graham Potter, Bruno Saltor, Frank Lampard, Mauricio Pochettino and, in pre-season, Enzo Maresca. Different managers, different demands and different systems. Under Potter, for example, Sterling was occasionally deployed as a wing-back.

At Arsenal, the environment is more settled. Arteta has been in charge for almost five years and he has created a defined system, similar to the formation in which Sterling played at City.

In theory, Sterling should therefore be able to plug into Arsenal’s set-up relatively quickly. He knows the demands of such a system, and he should know where to be and when to be there. It was this sort of structure that allowed him to score the same type of goal so often in his time at City.

Attacking the six-yard box, timing his run and tapping in a low cross: this was Sterling’s trademark. A remarkable 42 per cent of Sterling’s 131 goals for City were scored from within the six-yard box. At Chelsea, where the system was far more loose and undefined, only 16 per cent of his 19 goals were scored from such close range.

Perhaps most excitingly for Arsenal, Sterling could help Bukayo Saka to master the art of poaching from the wing. Saka has many strengths but he has never been a predator in the way that Sterling was at City. Only 12 per cent of Saka’s 59 goals for Arsenal have come inside the six-yard box.

In his best years at City, Sterling became as much of a striker as he was a winger. The 2019-20 season, when he scored goals at the fastest rate of his career, was also the season in which he attempted the fewest dribbles of his career. His job was to finish goals, not create them.

Now, at his new club but with the help of an old coach, Sterling is hoping to roll back the years, to return to those days. By replicating the form of his past, he could help to push Arsenal towards a potentially glorious future.

‘I knew in the first 10 seconds we have to bring him’

Mikel Arteta has revealed it took only “10 seconds” of conversation with Raheem Sterling to be convinced that Arsenal needed to sign the winger this summer.

Arteta, who worked with Sterling to spectacular effect at Manchester City earlier in their careers, believes the 29-year-old winger is desperate to “prove a point” after his unceremonious exile from Chelsea.

Arsenal pounced to sign Sterling on favourable terms on the final day of the transfer window, and are understood to be paying less than half of his wages this season. Sterling has spent the last two weeks training with his new club and could make his debut against Tottenham Hotspur in this weekend’s north London derby.

“The first call I had with him, I knew in the first 10 seconds we have to bring him,” said Arteta. “Because he really wanted it.

“That was my only question mark: what stage is he at in his career? After 10 seconds I knew already, before the next questions, that we needed him here.

“He looks great. He’s got a lot of energy, a smile on his face and he’s at it. He wants to prove a point and when someone’s got that in his belly you sense it straight away. Obviously, I don’t need to know anything else about his quality and what he can bring to the team.”

Sterling is hoping that his loan spell at Arsenal could help him to force his way back into the England fold, with the winger keen to add to his 82 international caps.

Gabriel Jesus available

“What I see is hunger,” said Arteta. “He’s a player that wants to play every minute of every game. When that’s not the case, he’s not happy. He wants to play every single day and I see that. His commitment and the level of energy that he’s bringing to the team is a big boost. You can feel it walking through the door. We are better with him. He’s going to make us better.”

Arteta offered little clarity on the ankle injury suffered by Arsenal captain Martin Odegaard earlier this week, saying that the Norway international still requires more tests in the coming days. Italy defender Riccardo Calafiori is also a doubt for Sunday’s derby, although Gabriel Jesus should be available after missing the past two games with a groin problem.

“We need some more tests,” Arteta said of Odegaard. “Let’s see what happens in the next day or so. This afternoon probably. Let’s see the extent of the injury and how quickly we can get him back. He’s super positive about everything. Martin wants to be here every day, but we have to wait and see.”