The league leaders dropped points at the Stadium Of Light as they faced a relentless Sunderland side who fought until the very end in what was a tough 2-2 result for Arteta. The Spanish head coach has proven himself to be a formidable manager in recent years and despite this weekend’s result, he looks to be close to claiming his first league title.
Now, as Arteta heads into the international break, he has made an interesting revelation about how he and his staff are using AI to analyse data that can help players on the pitch.
“It’s a tool that is super powerful if you use it in the right way and you ask the right questions. It’s in use already for many things and many processes that can help not just a team but an organisation as well. It will improve and it will give us good insight, or things at least to think about. I’m not an expert but it’s a valuable tool.
“We have developed certain things that in our opinion can help us to understand ourselves better and evaluate what we do and what we can improve. And then we will explore using it in many other areas of the club.”
The Spaniard, 43, added that AI can help in a number of ways that the human brain does not often think about. Mass amounts of data can be confusing, and Arteta says that AI can break it down, revealing information that would never have been seen.
“If it’s reliable, it can help us (for injuries), for sure, but always without losing the sensitivity and feeling and following your gut. We are dealing with human beings and that’s an aspect that, so far, it is not able to replace.
“With the stats, it is about how do I interpret those stats and how reliable they are? You can get very confused, very annoyed, immediately. But this data means nothing, because you have to analyse. What is the methodology of that? And if you don’t understand that, and you just look at the data, then you can have a big problem.”