In some ways, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain says with a laugh, it feels like being “a kid in a candy shop”. He is just back home from training at Arsenal and is raving about the experience, grateful to feel like part of the family again after eight years away.
Out on the grass at London Colney, under the watchful eye of his former Arsenal team-mates Mikel Arteta and Per Mertesacker, it has all felt wonderfully familiar.
The past couple of weeks have brought appearances in practice games against Watford and Manchester United, the latter a 3-0 win on Saturday, when he played for an hour in the midfield of a side containing Gabriel Jesus, Max Dowman and others. “It was great,” he says. “Great to get some minutes and I feel good physically.”
Oxlade-Chamberlain loved those years playing for Arsenal under Arsene Wenger, before a transfer to Liverpool in summer 2017. But the Arsenal he has temporarily returned to feel so much bigger, more modern and more geared to success under Arteta’s leadership. “The perfect environment”, he calls it.
We will come back to all of that.
But Oxlade-Chamberlain can hardly wait to move on again.
As much as he is enjoying it — training with the Arsenal’s young prospects, building up his fitness, passing on his experience, at times working with the first-team squad and “some of the best players in Europe” — this is a short-term arrangement born of necessity for a player without a club since his contract with Turkish club Besiktas was terminated by mutual agreement in late August.
“I want to play,” Oxlade-Chamberlain says. “I’m not ready to call it quits by any means. I don’t feel old. I’ve still got that hunger to play and do well. I just want the opportunity to show what I can still do.”
The past few years have been the toughest of his career: a frustrating end to his successful six-season spell at Liverpool; two turbulent ones in Istanbul with Besiktas; now back to England, where he finds himself a free agent at the age of 32, convinced he can still perform at a high level but still waiting for the chance to prove it.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Athletic at his home north of London, Oxlade-Chamberlain discusses:
- The many highs and occasional lows of a career in which injury has struck at the worst possible times
- His time at Besiktas, where he played under seven different coaches across two seasons and was frozen out at various points
- The many differences he sees — notably in mentality and off-pitch structure — between the Arsenal he left and the club he has returned to on a short-term basis
- His impressions of Arteta the manager and of the squad he has assembled, including youngsters Dowman, Ethan Nwaneri and Myles Lewis-Skelly
- The trauma of losing a baby to miscarriage and the importance of supporting his pop-star fiancee through her current pregnancy as they await the arrival of their second child
- His sense of unfinished business in English football and desire to find a new club where he can “add value” on and off the pitch.
When Arsenal held an open training session the day before their Champions League away match against Slavia Prague in early November, there was a sudden buzz among the press pack.
Was that really Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain over on the next pitch, working with the club’s under-21s? Yes, it was.
So how did it come about?
“I spoke to Per (Mertesacker, the former Arsenal defender who is now head of the club’s academy programme),” Oxlade-Chamberlain says. “I asked him if it would be possible to come and train with the under-21s, and I explained how I thought I could add value as well by working with the young players. Per liked the idea, and then he obviously had to get that signed off internally.”
Arteta was enthusiastic too.
“One of the best characters I met in football,” the Arsenal first-team manager told reporters when asked what Oxlade-Chamberlain was doing there. “If we can help him and give him the space to get up to speed and the capacity to find a club, it’s a joy. I had the privilege to play with him and, if he is around, he will be a really good role model to have around the team.”
That was music to Oxlade-Chamberlain’s ears. That is how he sees himself: a good team-mate, a role model. Arteta and Arsenal didn’t “need” to let him in, he says, “so it was quite humbling and nice to hear, and it makes me even more determined to help them by helping out some of the younger players and sharing my experiences”.
Oxlade-Chamberlain training with Arsenal’s youngstersHarry Murphy/Getty Images
Oxlade-Chamberlain was one of those rare young English talents for whom everything happened quickly.
At 15, he was told by an academy coach at Southampton that he might not get a scholarship due to his lack of height. At 16, in March 2010, he made his first-team debut for the same club. At 17, he joined Arsenal in a projected £15million transfer. At 18, he made his Premier League debut before forcing his way into England’s 2012 European Championship squad and holding his own against France in their opening game of the tournament.
Anything seemed possible for Oxlade-Chamberlain back then, as one of Arsenal’s and England’s great hopes. The main question was whether his future lay on the wing (either one) or midfield — or, later, at left wing-back, where he performed well in an FA Cup final win against Chelsea in 2017.
It was only at Liverpool that he began to play regularly in his favoured midfield role, excelling on their run to the 2017-18 Champions League final, starting both legs of the quarter-final against Manchester City (scoring a spectacular goal in a 3-0 home win in the first game at Anfield) and the semi-final first leg against Roma, when, while in arguably the best form of his career, he tore the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in his right knee.
He missed almost the whole of the next season, grateful to make the bench for the Champions League final against Tottenham, before returning to make significant contributions to Liverpool’s Premier League title-winning campaign in 2019-20. Beyond Jurgen Klopp’s favoured starting XI (featuring a first-choice midfield of Jordan Henderson, Fabinho and Georginio Wijnaldum), nobody started more games or played more minutes in the Premier League for the club that season.
The subject of injuries is inescapable when discussing Oxlade-Chamberlain’s career. He says the problem was not “muscle strains, that sort of thing”, but three serious issues that came at the worst possible times, causing him to miss major tournaments with England (the 2014 and 2018 World Cups and Euro 2016) as well as big moments at club level.
“It always seemed to happen when I was flying,” he says. “Could it be that the better you’re playing, the more games you play, the more risks you take, the more challenges you make? I don’t know. That one against Roma came when I raced back to tackle (Aleksandar) Kolarov and put it out for a throw-in.”
He pauses and asks himself whether he could simply have avoided making that challenge — and then he answers his own question. “No,” he shrugs, “the way I play is full-blooded.
“So much about football is about luck and about timing. I’ve been unlucky getting certain injuries at certain times, but on the flip side, the way I got called up to the first team at Southampton at 16 was lucky. Not long before that, I was (looking like) getting released. Then at 18, I was playing for Arsenal and England.
“Then you get to a certain level, you show signs of — what’s the word? — potential, and a certain expectation gets put on you. And if you don’t hit that expectation by 21, 22, 23, people are like, ‘Oh, he’s not Neymar then’, ‘He’s not hit the heights of (Wayne) Rooney’.
“Could things have gone better at times? Yes. Could I have scored more goals? Yes. Could I have played more games? Yes. Did I have more injuries than I wanted at times? Yes. And I can say there were times where maybe I could have been more pushy or looked to move on (to a new team) earlier when I wasn’t getting as many games as I wanted. But I’ve always done the best I could.
“I feel lucky to have had the career I’ve had because since I left Liverpool, I’ve seen how difficult it can be.”
We hadn’t talked since Istanbul in October 2023, shortly after Oxlade-Chamberlain joined Besiktas. It was a surprising move after his Liverpool contract expired that summer, but he was full of enthusiasm. He had lucrative offers to move to Saudi Arabia in that window, but Besiktas excited him more.
He was enjoying the lifestyle, the food and the passion that surrounds Turkish football, having already experienced highs (the fans’ acclaim after scoring the winning goal against Kayserispor in his second Super Lig start) and lows (the wrath of the same supporters as they protested against the club’s management).
One of his observations back then was that he had already played under as many managers in Turkey in his first two months there as in 12 years in the Premier League. It didn’t get any less volatile after that; by the end of his second season, he had played under seven bosses, including two interims. Only his last, former Manchester United manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, lasted more than 20 games.
“Things change quite quickly over there,” Oxlade-Chamberlain says. “When you’re used to having had Arsene for six years and then Jurgen for six years, that’s quite a shock.”
So was the sight of the fans confronting players at the training ground after defeats.
“It’s great when they’re happy,” he says, “but on other occasions… well, the Turkish players would do the communicating, but you certainly got the gist of it from the fans’ body language.
“Any time we had a couple of bad games, everything changed. Not just the manager, but everything: the schedule, the type of training we were doing, if we had a day off, if we stayed in a hotel the night before games, which players were in favour and which players weren’t. Things were changing all the time, and we were just battling for some stability.”
The turmoil also included two changes of club president. While he was one of the previous regime’s marquee signings, Oxlade-Chamberlain was one of 10 players declared surplus to requirements in summer 2024. Giovanni van Bronckhorst, who took over as coach at that time, did not pick him once in 20 games in charge before he, too, was moved on in the November.
It was a tough experience — particularly given he was away from his family. As tough as dealing with a long-term injury? “Probably, yes,” he says. “When you’re injured, there’s always a moment of acceptance: ‘OK, I’m out for this long, and this is how I’m going to get back’. But when you’re fit and training well, and you’re not playing, and you don’t know why, that’s tough.
“The important thing for me was that I stayed professional, trained hard and made sure I was available when I was called upon. Thankfully, when Ole came in, I was playing again. That was probably the most settled I felt over there.
“There were some really good moments and some not-so-good moments. I was ready to come home, but I’m glad I did it.”
Oxlade-Chamberlain spent two seasons with BesiktasAhmad Mora/Getty Images
The conversation turns back to Arsenal. What is the biggest difference between the club he left and the one he has returned to on a short-term basis eight years later?
“Everything has got bigger,” he says. “Arsene kept his circle quite small and intimate. The number of people who worked around the players was small, whereas now the number of staff, the number of players, the way they do the nutrition and everything else, everything is bigger and has gone in that direction of being elite-level.
“It’s different, but straight away I could see everyone is singing from the same hymnsheet — staff and players — and the whole club is moulded in that one direction.”
Oxlade-Chamberlain upset Arsenal fans in 2017 by saying that he needed to get out of a “comfort zone” to “get more out of myself”, but the point he was making was vindicated by the way the north London club continued to drift while Liverpool were making the great leap from pretenders to contenders to European champions and then Premier League winners.
“Maybe at Arsenal we just didn’t have the right ingredients for the bigger games, to know how to win dirty,” he says of that period. “Maybe that was a character thing.”
He characterises that Arsenal team as “sort of believing” they could win big games, but it wasn’t belief of the type he encountered at Liverpool, where “even the biggest games — even against Manchester City — there was this total focus where we almost knew we were going to win.
“It’s not necessarily like, individually, we were way better (than Arsenal), but it was a different mentality. We defended and fought like our lives depended on it. I can’t speak highly enough of my team-mates at Liverpool and the environment the manager created.”
And the obvious question is whether he sees that same title-winning mentality in today’s Arsenal.
“I think that’s the biggest thing, looking at them,” he says. “I can’t speak about the (first-team) dressing room, because I’m not part of that. But from the structure I’m seeing and the way they conduct themselves and the intensity they train with, they’ve got everything you need in order to be really successful.
“Then at that point, like we did at Liverpool, you’ve got to go out and do it, haven’t you?”
Which Arsenal players have impressed him? He puffs out his cheeks.
“All of them,” he says. He starts by mentioning Declan Rice (“unbelievable, he was already a great player at West Ham but now he’s gone into another stratosphere”) and Martin Odegaard (“the quality he has got, the way he leads by example”) before saying, “Honestly, I could keep going.”
And he does, reeling off almost the entire squad.
There is special praise for Gabriel Jesus, with whom he has worked closely as the Brazil forward nears a comeback after almost a year out with an ACL injury — something Oxlade-Chamberlain can relate to. “What a player he is,” he says. “I’ve played against him many times, but just seeing how he trains, the way he works, how sharp his finishing is, he’s really impressive.
“And I’ve been really impressed by the young guys, like Max (Dowman), Ethan (Nwaneri) and Myles (Lewis-Skelly). Ability-wise and the way they are as characters, it’s really impressive at such a young age.”
As someone who played for Southampton in third-tier League One at 16, what does he make of Dowman, who made his Premier League debut in August and Champions League bow two months later, both at the age of 15? He laughs.
“When I saw him for the first time, I was thinking, ‘Let’s see what all this talk is about,’” he says. “It wasn’t even a session where you could do that much, but right from the off, you could tell he is a proper player, the way he controls the ball and the way he moves. And from what I see, he’s a really good character, mature in the way he carries himself.”
And Arteta? Is he surprised by how well his former team-mate has adapted to the demands of management?
“I wouldn’t say surprised, knowing the character he is and how much he helped me as a player,” he says. “But to see it up close, the attention to detail and the way he delivers messages, it’s really impressive.
“It’s that thing all the top modern-day managers have. He leaves no stone unturned. It’s the small details, but also the way he delivers the bigger ideas. And seeing the way it’s all put into place, the way they work on set pieces as well as general play, there’s something really strong going on down there. I’ve been really, really impressed — and I’ve had some top, top managers.”
Right. Come on, Alex. The big question.
Just how much time do Arsenal spend working on set pieces?
“I don’t want to give away anything about what they do. It’s not my place to,” he says. “I just think one of Mikel’s strengths is that, although he was a technical player, coming from that Barcelona background, working with Manchester City and Pep (Guardiola), and his football ideas are amazing, he’s also very detailed on the less sexy stuff. That gives them different ways to win football matches, because there will always be times when your ideas don’t work so well, and a set piece might be the difference.
“People focus on the set pieces (with Arsenal), but it’s more the detail in every area of the game. The progress they have made under Mikel backs that up. Whatever they’re doing, they’re moving in the right direction, for sure.”
We are talking at the Hertfordshire home Oxlade-Chamberlain shares with his pop-star fiancee Perrie Edwards, of Little Mix, the third highest-selling girl group of all time, and their four-year-old son Axel.
It’s picture-perfect, dressed for Christmas — personalised stockings already hanging from the mantelpiece — and the thought occurs that, with the earnings from a career spent largely at Arsenal and Liverpool before his two years at Turkey ended with a seven-figure pay-off, finding a new club to sign for is clearly not a financial imperative.
He acknowledges the point. “But I want to play,” he says. “I don’t feel old. I’m fit, and I’ve still got that hunger.”
That comes across time and again during the interview, not least the frustration of currently being without a team. As much as training full time with Arsenal has filled a gap, matchdays can leave an empty feeling.
But it has been a relief to be home to support Edwards through her pregnancy, rather than a four-hour flight away.
She recently revealed on the We Need To Talk podcast that she suffered a miscarriage in 2022 when 24 weeks into pregnancy, which she described as “the worst day of my life”, recalling her own anguish and the devastated look on Oxlade-Chamberlain’s face as they received the news.
Oxlade-Chamberlain has not spoken publicly about it before.
“When you start a family, that’s when you start to learn it’s not easy to have a child, that things can go wrong,” he says. “It’s so difficult — especially for women when they are literally growing another human being inside them, the connection they feel to that, and then can things go wrong and they can lose the baby. And it’s so difficult, especially losing the baby so late into the pregnancy.”
It happened towards the end of his time at Liverpool, and he recalls taking a couple of days off but feeling that “as a man, you just have to put on a brave face and try to hold the fort” — and finding it hard to do so.
He mentions the discomfort he felt, around six months later, when he bumped into another player who excitedly asked how the baby was getting along. “Because the last time he saw us, we were expecting. He didn’t realise what had happened.
“It definitely helped that we had Axel to focus on, but it was obviously difficult. It took a while for us to get to the place where we felt, ‘OK, should we try this again?’ And it’s been nice to be at home with Perrie for the past few months and to have this time with Axel as well. He’s excited (about his new brother or sister). We all are.”
Oxlade-Chamberlain and fiancee Perrie EdwardsTolga Akmen/AFP via Getty Images
This is one of the reasons why, beyond professional frustrations, Oxlade-Chamberlain was desperate to come home from Besiktas and why, as a free agent, he has preferred to bide his time rather than jump at the first opportunity to sign for a club.
He says there has been renewed interest from Saudi Arabia and, intriguingly, Major League Soccer since then, but, after a difficult time in Turkey and with a baby on the way, his immediate priority is to find somewhere closer to home. The prospect of playing in MLS has always appealed to him, but in the short term, he feels he has unfinished business in English football, and he hopes to sign for a club in the coming weeks.
Oxlade-Chamberlain repeatedly references wanting to “add value” to a team, bringing quality and experience on the pitch, but also to the dressing room and the training pitch. He reluctantly agrees with the suggestion that, with so many clubs at all levels increasingly focused on data-driven recruitment and resale value, intangibles such as depth of knowledge and know-how seem to be less appreciated than in the past.
Beyond that, he wonders whether some clubs have a preconception of what a senior player should look like — “a Jordan Henderson or James Milner character that everyone knows is the mouthpiece and the driving force”. He loved both Henderson and Milner as team-mates with Liverpool and England, but he wonders if his more affable character might be held against him.
“You know… laid-back, happy-go-lucky,” he says. “At Liverpool, I was always ‘the funny one’ on the videos we used to do, having a laugh. (Former Arsenal defender) Carl Jenkinson said to me the other day, ‘Do you think people know what you’re actually like as a professional, how competitive you are and what you’re like in the dressing room?’ I think there’s something to that.”
He mentions another former Arsenal team-mate, Danny Welbeck, who, five years after being released by Watford, then as now a Championship side, and spending time without a club, is enjoying an outstanding season with Brighton & Hove Albion at the age of 35.
“The perfect example,” he says. “It shows you that, if you look after yourself and work hard, you can still be effective. And knowing Welbz, I just know the value that having him and James Milner — two very different characters — will bring to that dressing room in terms of the standards they set.”
That is what Oxlade-Chamberlain wants to do.
“I feel like I can add value on the pitch but also show the right way to train, the right way to act on and off the pitch,” he says. “I’m in the bracket now where I’ve been lucky enough to play for top clubs, win things and work with top managers. I know a lot more now than I did when I started out.”
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