Arsenal hire All Blacks mental skills guru- ex-All White Ceri Evans

Ceri Evans, former All whites captain, Rhodes Scholar and practising forensic psychiatrist, has also worked with the All Blacks. Photo / Greg Bowker.

All Blacks adviser Dr Ceri Evans has been hired by English Premier League giants Arsenal as a mental skills specialist.

Evans is being used by manager Arsène Wenger this season because he has identified mental weaknesses in the past in his players when it comes to performing well over the course of a campaign.

Arsenal have in the past been accused of falling short - failing to win the Premier League or Champions League and losing key matches under pressure - and there has already been a discernible difference in their mental toughness: they recently went on a 19-match unbeaten run.

An Arsenal spokesman confirmed that the club was using Evans: . "We are always looking for new ways to progress and continue competing at the top of the game," he said. "This involves every aspect of the way we work with our players and this is part of that continuous improvement. We will not discuss any detail of this work."

Evans has worked with the All Blacks since 2011 and is a former All White - making 85 appearances during the 1980s and early '90s as a central defender - and is now a practising forensic psychiatrist.

He spent five seasons playing for Oxford United, and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, where he studied experimental psychology, before dropping into the lower leagues in this country and then working as a psychiatrist and consultant for a range of organisations and sports.

Last year Evans was used by the Mercedes Formula One team, providing help to their drivers, Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, and he offers was it is known as an 'anti-choke mechanism' - a way of dealing with high-pressure and high-stakes.

"The mind often limits us," Evans said in a recent interview. "And actually our body can do more, and gets played out in different ways, even just in straight endurance. We think we've reached our threshold but the mind gives up first."

In his work with the All Blacks Evans described two mental states: 'Red Head/Blue Head'. Red Head is negative, when you are overwhelmed and tense, while Blue Head is cool and controlled. He devised 'personal triggers' - for example, a player can stamp his feet on the turf to 'ground' himself, or use mental imagery, such as picturing himself in the stadium - to try to get back from being a 'Red Head' to a 'Blue Head'.

Sports psychologists refer to this as being like regulating an emotional thermostat.

The use of sports psychologists is commonplace in sport, although it is interesting that the normally guarded Wenger has turned to one. Liverpool used Dr Steve Peters when Brendan Rodgers was manager - with Peters also working with the England team under Roy Hodgson - while the former cricketer Jeremy Snape is employed by Crystal Palace and works in particular with manager Alan Pardew.

Interestingly Wenger has already praised Arsenal's mental toughness this season - not least after the late draw at Manchester United last month. "We had a good mental response to come back with a point," he said, adding, "last year we would have lost this game", while conceding that Arsenal can suffer from a mental block at Old Trafford.

Wenger has also given further clues that he is working with a sports psychologist when he said: "In this game a lot is linked with confidence and I feel that at the moment it's high because we win game after game.

"That means we can get over the dodgy periods [in games] with less psychological damage but what you want is to get them out as well."

Possibly, the work of Evans can already be traced in Arsenal's season so far. Traditionally they have suffered a dip in form in the month of November - when statistics show they historically have taken just 1.59 points per game under Wenger - but this season they were unbeaten in the league in their bogey month, although they did go out of the EFL Cup in the quarter-finals against Southampton and drew three of their six games. Even so they achieved an above-average November of 1.7 points per Premier League game.