Jack Wilshere’s ‘deep love for football’ has returned after taking charge of Arsenal’s Under 18s

Jack Wilshere kept a scrapbook during his playing days. His pages are full of nuggets, quarried on the way from Arsenal’s academy to Arsenal’s bench via Bolton, Bournemouth, West Ham and Denmark.

The 31-year-old man was jotting down snippets of conversations. How the managers behaved, too. It’s all come in handy in the last nine months, since Wilshere took charge of Arsenal’s Under 18s. Unfortunately, there was a hole in his investigation.

“The coaching aspect, when I first came in, was the most important thing,” Wilshere explains. ‘Trying to find a way to play against teams, trying to develop an individual.’

But? ‘Obviously, it was a different world that she was entering. The corporate world, all the emails! I was like: ‘What’s going on here?’

That belated introduction to administrative life forced Wilshere to rethink his routine. “But now I’ve figured it out,” says the 31-year-old. I have structured my day better.

So you can focus on your equipment and your training. They are already two steps away from the cutlery.

At the Emirates on Tuesday, Arsenal take on Manchester City in the FA Youth Cup semi-finals. A proxy war ahead of the battle for Premier League supremacy.

‘It has given me back my true and deep love for football. And I didn’t know I had lost it, to be honest,” Wilshere says of this first step into management.

‘I came back here last year, I was training a bit, training a bit. So I had to make a decision. He was a free agent and had offers from all over Europe. He chose Aarhus in Denmark before retiring at the age of 30, just five months later.

“I loved it, the country, the people, but not that much,” says Wilshere. ‘I did not know that.’ Not until this new chapter began.

Wilshere, who first joined Arsenal aged nine, won the Youth Cup in 2009. He then became one of 86 youngsters since 2000 to graduate to the first team. Now his task is to guide the next generation down the same path.

“There are players who are good enough,” he says. ‘So it’s up to them when they get in front of the manager [Mikel Arteta] and even me to give them what they need.’

Wilshere is often asked: what is my path? His response is simple: ‘Every time we’re there, whether we’re acting as Leeds or Sporting, you’re in front of the manager. There is your path. There’s your chance.

Help Wilshere, head of the academy Per Mertesacker and their players see Bukayo Saka, Emile Smith Rowe and Eddie Nketiah climbing the highest rungs of that ladder in real time.

“What role models,” he says. You couldn’t ask for anyone better. B will come and talk to the young players. Before the last game he sent us a video.

He adds: “It’s amazing and inspiring for kids.”

Wilshere was Arsenal’s youngest league player when, aged 16 years and 256 days, he faced Blackburn in 2008. Earlier this season, Ethan Nwaneri, then 15, broke that record.

“Of course it’s a balance, because not every player is going to play in the Arsenal first team,” says Wilshere. ‘We play from behind and we want our full-back to be (Oleksandr) Zinchenko.

“But we also try to have that balance to say: our full-back might not play for Arsenal.”

Wilshere adds: ‘This club has a tradition of bringing in young players, developing them and trusting them.’ But?

“What makes my job more difficult is that the first team keeps raising the bar… (so) we have to keep raising the bar too, otherwise who will be the next B or the next Emile?”

It was a lesson he learned by admiring Cesc Fábregas. ‘When he made his debut I was 12 years old and I was like: ‘Wow! That’s the level I need to get to. And I need to be better than him, because when I’m 16, he’ll only be 20.’

All of these shared experiences are important in a job that Wilshere believes: “You have to know the person before you know the player.”

He explains: “I think about the bad experiences I’ve had with the coaches and probably the most important thing is that they couldn’t connect with the players…if I don’t have a connection with an individual, I really feel that.” ‘

It can’t hurt that Wilshere is still only 31 years old. “Also maybe being a father will help,” he says. “My kids are closer in age to my players than I am, so I can see what they need and want.”

But that won’t stop you from learning. He is in the FA’s ‘International Player to Coach’ programme. He will soon visit Belgium to study Lommel’s manager Steve Bould, a former Arsenal defender who was Wilshere’s manager in 2009.

“I had a mock head coach interview the other day with some old head coaches,” he adds.

Wilshere is also in the habit, the day before a game, of watching Arteta’s preparations. He has had a great influence on me.

They were teammates with Arsene Wenger; Wilshere has described Arteta the player as the ‘teacher’s pet’. They are still different characters. But Arteta’s methods are leaking out.

“He’s a really smart coach, but he also knows how to motivate people,” says Wilshere. He too often in unorthodox ways.

‘I’ve done some weird stuff that I won’t tell you!’ He smiles.

‘When I was starting out, there wasn’t really that side of training – Arsene would never bring a light bulb or play music before a game – but part of me feels like it’s great. With this generation, with Instagram, they’re seeing motivational videos and things to motivate them all the time. I think it works.

So before the games, Wilshere will dive into his very own box of tricks. Some of them have worked, some have not! he says.

‘When you have a connection to your players like Mikel has, and you can see that he really cares, the players accept that and will do what you really want.

“You can tell them to build with three in the back or four in the back, but it goes deeper than that.”

And he adds: “The best learning about me and my coaching style is day by day, on the field, having small conversations with the players, seeing what works for me… seeing what the player needs”.

So what have you learned? “I don’t think the day of the blow dryer is over,” says Wilshere. But sometimes, like when Arsenal were losing 2-0 to Watford in this Youth Cup run, it pays to be positive.

“Arsene was very good at it, maybe I’m influenced by him a little bit,” says Wilshere.

‘There were only a few occasions where I saw him lose his mind, with good reason. No with me!’

And he adds: ‘This is what interests me about coaching. Tactically, things start to take over. But? “Sometimes it’s just about taking care of and doing the basic things right.”

Sometimes it’s just about taking the plunge. Wilshere started his managerial badges while he was still an Arsenal player.

“I only did it because Per had been offered the position of director of the academy, but he needed his B and A (license) to get it,” he recalls.

I was on the bomb squad. Wilshere wasn’t playing. He had been told that he could leave. Instead he decided, ‘I’ll do it with you, Per… but I really wasn’t that interested.’ Now he has returned to the future.