Arsenal aim to pick Man City’s pockets in title race

Mikel Arteta reportedly hired a group of pickpockets to teach his Arsenal stars a valuable lesson and is now planning to steal the Premier League title from Manchester City.

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Arteta’s side suffered an agonising end to last season as City pipped them to the trophy by just two points on the final day.

Arsenal lost only one of their last 18 league games but still couldn’t hold off City’s relentless charge to an unprecedented fourth successive Premier League crown.

That painful near-miss came 12 months after the Gunners allowed City to snatch the 2022/23 title from their grasp after squandering an eight-point lead.

Rather than dull his appetite for success, those blows inspired Arteta to take his already obsessive attention to detail to new heights as he chases Arsenal’s first league title in 21 years.

“I don’t want to get over it,” he said. “We need that pain and that hunger to achieve what we want to achieve because the competition is unbelievable.”

With that in mind, Arteta secretly tasked a team of professional pickpockets with taking phones and wallets during a dinner with his players.

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At the end of the meal, he asked the squad to empty their pockets and they immediately realized they were missing valuable items.

The exercise was done to teach them of the importance of being alert at all times, on and off the pitch.

Arteta, whose side start their Premier League campaign at home to Wolves on Saturday, is no stranger to using creative ideas in a bid to motivate his players.

The Spaniard brought an olive tree into a team meeting last season, describing the players as the branches and the staff as the roots.

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