How the Arsenal dressing room works

A transfer is about far more than a change of clubs. For many players it’s a change of country, a change in lifestyle and in some cases a change of language.

Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain understands the importance of making new faces feel at home and lifted the lid on just how the squad welcome new additions.

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“On the pitch you don’t really need to speak the same language to be able to understand what each other want,” Oxlade-Chamberlain told Arsenal Player. “It’s more just shouting and pointing and you can get by just fine by doing that.

“Off the pitch in the dressing room when you’re trying to explain things to your team-mates or they’re trying to explain something to you, that’s when it can become a little bit more difficult.

“But I think the key thing is quite early on, finding a word or a few words that they understand and then you just use them to speak to someone.

“Whether it’s a joke or to explain something on football, you find a few key words that they understand and you understand and you can communicate just using a few words and pointing and using different tones of voice and that’s the way you go about it.

“I think to keep the camaraderie and the banter going around the dressing room you find a few words that they can resonate with being a joke and you’ll just be shouting them out all around the dressing room all day and making sure everyone’s really involved.

“We’ve got a lot of boys that do that well. I keep thinking of Danny Welbeck. He’s one, he has jokes with someone like Gabriel who doesn’t speak great English and they’ll be joking for 10 minutes and I don’t know what they’re talking about but they seem to be getting on like a house on fire.”

“If you’re warm with someone that doesn’t speak your language, they don’t need to understand what you’re saying to understand that you’re close to them and they’re important to you and the team.

“That’s the way it is and I think Arsenal is very nicely built like that. It’s a very nice environment for new players to come into and join the squad, whether they speak English or not.”