IN a different world, I could see Mikel Arteta on Britain’s Got Talent trying to impress with an unbelievable magic trick.

He’s not only going to try to animate the judges’ variously reconstructed faces and eyebrows by naming their card, but he’ll do it wearing a Gunnersaurus suit and doing keepy-uppies on a burning treadmill – as PJ and Duncan squirt Saudi Arabian oil in his face from the side of the stage.

All this will be performed while Arteta’s Anfield parasomnia song You’ll Never Walk Alone is piped into the auditorium and the Ashburton Army are smashing drums.
– Amanda, I don’t know what your qualifications are to judge other people’s talents, but your card was the four of spades.
­– Oh Mikel, I don’t know either but… golden buzzer!

In real life, Arteta is sort of doing the same with his surprise title contenders at Arsenal. He seems keen not just to perform the magic trick of winning the trophy everybody said the Gunners had no chance of lifting.

No – that would be too simple. Life is about challenging yourself.

So it is that Arteta has instead set out like a death-defying adventurer to try and win the Premier League by playing virtually the same eleven players every match.

He is doing this in a season when most of them have also spent extra reserves of energy at a Christmas World Cup.

But still Arteta wants it to be more impressive, a harder feat. How about trying to win it with only Eddie Nketiah up front? Nobody’s ever done that before!

Are you impressed, Amanda? No? Well how about we try to win it without buying any new strikers in the transfer window?

ARE YOU IMPRESSED YET? NO? Well, how about we try and win it by playing the same players every week – and never making any subs. Or at least not until there’s only 10 or so minutes left.

This apparent desire to not only win the league but do it after first tying at least one limb behind his back, came back to burn Arteta on Wednesday night. For 45 minutes, Arsenal were challenging the champions straight up.

And it was a victory of sorts to see City, a team built with a billion pounds, time-wasting on the half hour mark.

But then Arsenal ran out of puff, a team of talented players who look simply knackered, making tired mistakes.

Some players clearly need a rest – and in Gabriel Martinelli’s case, a bit of a coaching about what to do when he gets to the edge of the box with a man still to beat.

This blunt forward line needs something fresh, but Arteta may have missed the moment to pull new recruits and much-needed back-up out of the hat.