Stronger mental game key to Gunners firing this season

LONDON — Arsenal are working with the man credited with turning the All Blacks into Rugby World Cup winners, as they attempt to give their players a psychological edge.

Dr Ceri Evans is being used by manager Arsene Wenger this season because the Gunners manager has identified mental weaknesses in the past in his players when it comes to performing well over the course of a campaign.

Arsenal have in the past been accused of falling short — failing to win the Premier League or Champions League and losing key matches under pressure — and there has already been a discernible difference in their mental toughness: They recently went on a 19-match unbeaten run.

Evans’s biggest claim to fame is working with the New Zealand rugby union team. After not winning the World Cup for 23 years the All Blacks triumphed twice — in 2011, the year after he started working with them, and 2015 — with Evans on board.

The 53-year-old is a New Zealander and the former captain of his country’s football team — making 85 appearances during the 1980s and early ’90s as a central defender — and is now a practising forensic psychiatrist.

He spent five seasons playing for Oxford United, and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where he studied experimental psychology, before dropping into the lower leagues in England and then working as a psychiatrist and consultant for a range of organisations and sports.

Last year, Evans was used by the Mercedes Formula One team, providing help to their drivers, Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, and he offers what is known as an “anti-choke mechanism” — a way of dealing with high pressure and high stakes.

“The mind often limits us,” Evans said. “Actually our body can do more, and gets played out in different ways, even just in straight endurance. We think we’ve reached our threshold but the mind gives up first.”

In his work with the All Blacks, Evans described two states: “Red Head/Blue Head.” Red Head is negative, when you are overwhelmed and tense, while Blue Head is cool and controlled. He devised “personal triggers” — for example, a player can stamp his feet on the turf to “ground” himself, or use mental imagery, such as picturing himself in the stadium — to try to get back from being a “Red Head” to a “Blue Head”.

Sports psychologists refer to this as similar to regulating an emotional thermostat.

Possibly, Evans’ work can be traced in Arsenal’s season so far. Traditionally, they have suffered a dip in form in November — when they have taken just 1.59 points per game under Wenger — but this season they were unbeaten in the league in their bogey month, although they did go out of the EFL Cup against Southampton and drew three of their six games. Even so, they achieved an above-average November of 1.7 points per EPL game. THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH