Mikel Arteta's move to Manchester City and the training exercise that transformed Raheem Sterling

It was the training exercise that helped transform Raheem Sterling from a pacy winger who barely reached double figures every season into a back-post assassin who was among the deadliest goalscoring wingers in Europe.

The change came in the 2017-18 season, Pep Guardiola's second in charge of Manchester City, the club Sterling will face again this Sunday as an Arsenal player.

It was Sterling's current manager Mikel Arteta, Guardiola's assistant from 2016 until 2019 when he left for the Emirates, who played a key role in extracting that stunning efficiency in front of goal.

Guardiola had more experienced assistants than Arteta, who was in his first coaching role, so he had the opportunity to focus on specialisms and learn from as many departments as possible.

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He has always been drawn to analysis, and his curiosity has led him down many a rabbit hole. His thirst for understanding specific moments of the game at a granular level has helped Arteta and the team of analysts focus on their work, but it has also seen their research become an integral part of the first-team decision-making process.

They worked on several projects that produced dramatic improvements: goalkeeper penalty tactics, the diagonal pass from full-back to winger that Ben White and Bukayo Saka perfected, and quantifying what makes a penalty box predator.

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Arteta began observing wingers around the world, searching for the sweet spot through the use of data. He and the team of analysts broke down the data based on where those wingers scored most often, how many touches they took and how quickly a shot had to be taken.

The higher the level, the less time and space players have to shoot. Areas have also been identified where most goals are scored and assisted.

From there, a drill was deduced in the academy which Arteta modified and introduced into the first-team environment for Sterling to work on.

Arteta tweaked a training exercise at City to help Sterling improve as a winger (Julian Finney/Getty Images)

Lorenzo Buenaventura, Guardiola's fitness coach, has enabled City to train as they do by making the sessions realistic. Again, the club's research has informed their thinking, as they have discovered that counter-attacks require much longer sprints than those usually associated with counter-attacking training. So Buenaventura has implemented a 60-metre sprint at the start of the exercise.

Sterling then had to shoot into a marked square under pressure from defenders, but the sprint meant that by the time they got there they had a lack of oxygen to their brains, making decision-making more difficult.

Arteta wore a stopwatch during the drill and if the shot wasn't taken in the allotted time, he would declare it dead and they would start again. The emphasis was on acting decisively, not overcomplicating things, which is what those who have followed Sterling's development at City believe to be the main lesson he has learned.

With little time to train due to a busy schedule, these post-training sessions have been important in getting the message across. Video work has also helped, with clips of wingers like Arjen Robben and Franck Ribery, who Guardiola worked with at Bayern Munich, used in combination with the 16 cameras at the training ground to show exactly what they were looking for.

Clips of Ribery and Robben, who were at Bayern with Guardiola, helped explain what they expected from Sterling (JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images)

Sterling arrived in 2015 as a 20-year-old and electrified Anfield with his dribbling as part of Brendan Rodgers' side that nearly won the Premier League in 2013-14. Manuel Pellegrini was the manager, but when Guardiola arrived a year later he had to change his game or he wouldn't have fit into his system.

As Jack Grealish's change of play since his move from Aston Villa in 2021 has shown, Guardiola asks his wide players to be more submissive to the team structure than some other managers.

One of the principles that Guardiola introduced at City was the need to always look for the free man in possession. To do this, a player had to understand when he was in a one-on-one situation. If that was the case, he was encouraged to be aggressive and attack his opponent, but if he was being passed, logic dictated that a teammate would be free elsewhere.

Sterling scored 10 goals and provided 15 assists in all competitions in 2016-17. It's a strong return for a young player. He scored 11 and 9 in 2014-15, and 11 and 8 in 2015-16.

But it was not elite level, nor was Leroy Sane's tally of nine goals and five assists in his first season after joining from Schalke. Once Arteta began to work more with the forwards in that second campaign, he unlocked numbers that had previously been out of reach for players who were thrilling but often flattering to deceive.

But success reinforces habits, which is why Sterling was so receptive to the idea of ​​diluting some of his natural game to become the difference-maker.

It was almost comical that many of his goals were scored from the same spot. But it was no coincidence, it was Guardiola's idea.

The most effective assist zone was identified as the touchline inside the penalty area. City worked tirelessly to find their wingers in this position, and if one was there, the other had to be on the opposite side, ready to play a back pass or send the ball straight into the back of the net.

In 2017–18, Sterling scored 23 goals and provided 14 assists. His shot conversion rate nearly doubled from 10.9% to 20.7% as City won the league with 100 points, a total no other team has achieved.

The following season he scored 25 goals and provided 14 assists, with Arteta's final season at City (he left for Arsenal in December 2019) seeing Sterling register his highest goal tally of 31.

His numbers declined slightly over the next two seasons, although he was still scoring in double figures, before he joined Chelsea. His struggles there are not surprising given the stability and structure of Guardiola's football.

It was the perfect platform, as Chelsea adopted so many different identities and such an aggressive recruitment strategy that continuity and consistency were hard to come by.

After being left out of the Chelsea squad this summer, with manager Enzo Maresca backtracking on previous comments about his importance, Sterling still had tens of millions he could have raised.

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When Arsenal sporting director Edu Gaspar presented the opportunity to reunite Arteta with his former winger, there were understandably questions. Sterling is now 29 and has achieved almost everything there is to achieve.

“From the first call I had with him, I knew within the first 10 seconds that we had to bring him in,” Arteta said earlier this month.

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

“He looks in great shape. He has a lot of energy, a smile on his face and he is motivated. He wants to prove something and when someone has that in their gut, you can feel it right away. Obviously, I don't need to know more about his qualities and what he can bring to the team.”

Sterling's arrival could not have been better timed. He had two weeks during the international break with only a handful of experienced players to refresh his muscle memory on Arteta's methods and the principles that have taken his game to another level.

It’s five years since they last worked together, and in that time they’ve both evolved. Sterling has leaned on his fatherhood and his religion, while Arteta is a different beast to the coach he worked with one-on-one, having seen how he leads an entire team. They’ll be hoping that shared maturity can be the difference against City on Sunday.

Sterling has had a good individual performance against his former club, scoring in both of Chelsea's games against them last season. He has shown he knows how to hurt them and gave Kyle Walker a hard time in the 4-4 draw last November.

Arteta has already found a way to access Sterling's untapped reserves. He hopes he can do it again.

(Top photo: Arteta and Sterling at City in 2019; Marc Atkins/Getty Images)