Jack Wilshere knows better than anyone what it's like to make the big step from the Arsenal academy into the first-team dressing room.
As the poster boy of our youth set-up for many year, our former midfielder has a lot he can pass on to the stars of tomorrow - and he's really enjoyed coaching our youth sides since returning to the club.
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"It’s been really good ever since the first day I came back," Wilshere told Arsenal Media. "I was a little bit nervous about coming back because of the changes and all the new things happening at the club, but everyone’s been brilliant with me, the manager, his staff, the coaches, people around the training ground and it’s been really good.
"I’ve been doing as much coaching as possible. Obviously, if the manager needs a player and they’re training at the same time, it was quite difficult, but actually, because of Covid it worked out quite nice that I was training in the morning with the first team and then coaching in the afternoon with the under 18s with Dan, Max, Chris and again, they’ve been really good.
"I feel even in a short amount of time I’ve improved so much as a coach, I’ve learnt so much about the coaching side of the game, I’ve really enjoyed it.
"I took pride [in passing on my knowledge to the academy players], but also where the coaches help me is that it’s one thing having the knowledge, I’ve been in all of those players’ footsteps and made it to the first team, but it’s alright knowing that and knowing how you do it, but it’s about how you get that across to the players and how you teach them and the coaches have really helped me with that."
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