‘Ended up doing push-ups’: Journalist spotted 21-year-old Arsenal player getting punished in training

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Bukayo Saka has barely put a foot wrong for Arsenal over the past few years, but it sounds as though he made a bit of a mistake in pre-season training this week.

Indeed, Arsenal hosted an open training session earlier this week, and speaking on his YouTube channel, Kaya Kaynak noticed that Saka was being punished for failure in one of the drills.

Kaynak explained how Arsenal’s squad were undergoing a complicated drill involving keepy-upys and cones, and it looked as though the losers in this challenge were forced to do press-ups.

While Saka is one of the most consistent performers for Arsenal, it sounds as though he got it wrong in this drill and ended up having to do a forfeit after losing in this exercise.

Saka punished

Kaynak shared what he saw from the 21-year-old.

“They did some classic running through cones and stretches, and then some innovative stuff where they had to do keepy-uppys and a coach would shout the colour of a cone and the coach would shout a colour of a cone, and they had to pick up that cone and the ball had to stay in the air. I didn’t fully understand it, somehow some players ended up doing push-ups, Bukayo Saka was one of them doing push-ups, it didn’t make too much sense to me, but that’s the way it went,” Kaynak said.

Bonding

It may seem a bit amateur to make your players do press-ups for losing these drills, but, as ever, there’s method behind the madness.

This is a great way for the players to bond, it gives an added competitive edge to the training, and they can all have a laugh when a player like Saka – who is usually the star of the show, is outdone by his teammates.

Pre-season is about fitness, but it’s also about bonding, and it sounds as though the Gunners have struck something of a happy-medium here.