ARSENAL manager Arsene Wenger is to adopt another child from abroad – after breaking down in tears when he realised most of his current squad of players want to leave. The Frenchman, nicknamed Fagin by pals, is world famous for recruiting young fingersmiths from foreign shores to carry out his miscellaneous larceny.

Star pickpocket Cesc Fabregas was rescued by Wenger in June 1987 after he found the Spaniard abandoned in a shoebox on a beach in Torremolinos. He also discovered Nicolas Anelka cowering under a storm drain in Paris and Emmanuel Eboue selling fake sunglasses to holidaymakers in Faliraki.

Wenger’s benevolence is widely noted on the continent, however some English orphans hit out at the Frenchman’s alleged preference for foreign hands. “’E discarded me like a burnt old cabbage pie,” sobbed David Bentley. “’E called me into his office one day and said that I ‘adn’t been ‘alf-‘inching enough wallets and ‘e turfed me out, squire. I ‘ad to walk all the way to Blackburn to find me another work’ouse.”

Fellow orphan Matthew Upson also complained of his ill treatment at the mercy of what he calls a ‘grossly malevolent and wicked’ man. “Wenger might treat his foreign children like his own kinder, but us English boys were treated like the dog shit he always seemed to have on the bottom of his shoes.”

Wenger claimed that he is in no way xenophobic and pointed to the fact that he has recently adopted both Justin Hoyte and Theo Walcott. “It is just that it is so much more fashionable to adopt a child from abroad,” said Wenger. “Just look at Angelina Jolie or that Maradonna woman, they don’t want some snivelling ungrateful English brat, they want one of those fancy exotic ones.”

When quizzed why this should be, Wenger replied: “The foreign ones are more servile, and they don’t eat all your gruel. Take that Jermaine Pennant, I took him in like a son and the bastard stole my Rolex.”

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