Mikel Arteta revived one of his mentor’s talking points last month, after Arsenal lost their League Cup semi-final first leg 2-0 to Newcastle. “We kicked a lot of balls over the bar, and it’s tricky that these balls fly a lot,” said Arteta. “It’s just different, very different to the Premier League ball. It flies different when you touch it, the grip is very different as well. You have to adapt to that.”

The ball in question was the Puma Orbita 1, identical in all but branding to the football used in the Championship, League One and League Two. The Premier League’s balls have been supplied by Nike for 25 years with the Flight its current model, an iteration of a design first used for 2020-21.

Pep Guardiola also noted the differences in a League Cup ball in 2017, when Arteta was on his staff. “The ball was unacceptable for a high-level competition,” said Guardiola. “It is too light, it moves all over the place, it is not a good ball. It is impossible to score with a ball like that and I can say that because we won, I’m not making excuses.” On that occasion Mitre were the manufacturers in the manager’s crosshairs.

Neither Guardiola nor Arteta were truly moaning. With some weeks to ruminate on Arteta’s words he actually seemed to be criticising his players’ failure to adapt, rather than any shortcomings from Puma. But did he have a point?

On a cold but blessedly dry morning in between legs one and two of the EFL Cup semis we headed to Hayes Lane, home of League Two’s Bromley FC. Armed with the Nike Flight and Puma Orbita 1, both in fetching wintertime high-vis yellow, we borrowed a first-teamer, a veteran, a goalkeeper and a youth-teamer to test the balls.

‘Premier League ball is more floaty’

From the sidelines it was impossible to establish any reliable pattern of behaviour. There were erratic shots from both balls from a variety of distances but superb rip-snorting efforts too. Bromley midfielder Jude Arthurs liked the Puma ball for free-kicks but preferred Nike’s when attempting the crossbar challenge – trying to hit the woodwork from the halfway line. He was the only competitor to achieve this aim, and he did so with the Premier League ball.

“We played with the FA Cup ball [a Mitre FA Cup Ultimax Pro] a few weeks ago,” he says. “It felt a bit flat, like an air-floater. These ones fly really well when you connect with them.

“I thought the Premier League ball was a bit more floaty on free-kicks, you couldn’t really kick through it as much. The EFL one, I could properly wrap my foot around it.”

Bromley were promoted from the National League to League Two last summer which meant a ball switch. “Last year we were using New Balance and when we came in for pre-season we had these new Puma balls and all the boys were saying: ‘I don’t like these.’ If we went back to the New Balance now they’d be saying the same thing, so I think it’s just about getting used to them.”

Scott Wagstaff is Bromley’s Under-17s coach but played more than 350 Football League games for Charlton, Bristol City and Gillingham among others. “I preferred the Carabao ball to strike as I think it’s a tiny bit heavier,” he says. “The Premier League one felt a bit more floaty, but it was nicer to strike on your feet, not hurting as much.”

Some balls force players to change their timings, making tiny but irritating alterations to honed biomechanics. But most clubs switch to whichever ball they will be using in their upcoming fixture for the training sessions which precede it. “The boys will know how they fly, how they float and what sorts of crosses and shots will work,” says Wagstaff. “Arsenal and the top teams will definitely get that beforehand, but they do have a lot of games so it might be more difficult.”

Lewis Bullen from Wagstaff’s Under-17s was in goal for our trial and had a blinder. Little got past him, but he found Arteta’s preferred Nike ball tougher to read than the Puma version. “The Premier League ball moved a lot more,” he says. Did he have any sympathy for Arteta? “No”.

‘It was the only ball I’ve got a death threat over’

With the not-so-scientific test concluded it was time to consult someone who has made a career out of researching sporting equipment. Professor Andy Harland is director of Loughborough University’s Sports Technology Institute and has been involved in testing and development of balls used at World Cups and European Championships. “My firm position is that if a ball meets the IFAB [International Football Association Board] standards then it is legitimate. Players having to adapt is probably a positive challenge.”

He was named in the patent for technology used for the infamous Adidas Jabulani which terrorised goalkeepers at the 2010 World Cup. This was not an altogether positive development. What was different about that ball? “It was the only ball I’ve got a death threat over,” he says.

“I’m not a ball designer, I’m not a ball manufacturer, the process was entirely undertaken by Adidas. I was out at the tournament in South Africa and got a call from my wife that journalists were camped outside my house, they wrote a few things, people started messaging me and somebody emailed me a death threat. I played non-League football, you get worse chanted at you at Shepshed Dynamo.”

That ball was one of the first to use a new production method which thermally bonds panels together rather than stitching them, with a reduction in seams causing aerodynamic unpredictability. Somewhat surprisingly there is no exacting requirement for dimensions or even materials in the IFAB laws which govern balls. Their circumference must be between 68 and 70cm with a weight of 410 to 450g. That is before you get into technicalities like ‘rebound height’, basically how bouncy a ball is, or how it behaves when struck.

“If you took a snapshot of a ball mid-collision, you might see it like a Pac-Man, where the boot has indented the ball, and the rest of the ball is largely spherical. Other balls will deform more as a whole ball, so they will look more like a rugby ball when they collide,” says Harland.

‘The perfect football doesn’t exist’

Flight through the air is especially complex to predict, with everything from the texture of the material to the depth of seams affecting stability. The Nike Premier League ball has obvious ridges which look like a toned-down version of those found on Predator boots. Ball designers “don’t want too much roughness, because the ball will slow down too quickly in flight,” says Harland. “You don’t want too little because its flight becomes less predictable.”

“No doubt you’re working with your graphic designers and your marketing departments as to what will look good on the shelves, what will look good on TV and what will give distinctiveness to your product whilst allowing it to perform well.

“The perfect football doesn’t exist but all the brands are striving towards it. That will be a ball that allows players to exhibit their skills. I daresay that if you took Wimbledon from the 1990s they’d think it would be one you could kick 80 metres and hang in the air for their big centre-forward to flick on, whereas if you took it to Man City of a couple of years ago they would want a ball that would skim along the turf to allow them quick passing.”

So was Arteta entitled to highlight differences between balls? Unquestionably so. Was he also employing some distraction techniques to draw attention away from his side being soundly beaten at home? Quite possibly. In any case he and his team had better get used to Puma. The company’s balls will replace Nike’s in the Premier League from next season, so best treat the second leg at St James’ Park on Wednesday night as a valuable acclimatisation exercise.