Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger warns mid-table teams must not cost them the title again as they prepare to host Burnley

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Arsene Wenger admits Arsenal have specifically targeted blitzing the Premier League’s middle ranks after the Gunners’ soft centre cost them a shot at the title last season.

Arsenal host Burnley on Sunday, the sort of game in which Wenger now admits that, last year, ‘we would drop points.’

The Frenchman sat his players down at the start of the new season to stress the importance of taking maximum points from mid-table teams and it appears to be working.

Arsene Wenger admits Arsenal have specifically targeted blitzing the league’s middle ranks

Arsenal face Burnley, a side they beat last year thanks to  Laurent Koscielny's handled goal

Wenger has stressed importance of beating teams like Burnley if Arsenal are to be champions

Wenger’s blueprint targeted beating teams placed between fifth and 12th in the Premier League. Arsenal only took 20 points from those games last season. This campaign, they already have 17. 

Now he wants to keep up that new ruthless streak by blitzing Burnley. A win would move Arsenal within five points of leaders Chelsea.

‘I think we are tougher. We are certainly more relentless,’ Wenger said.

‘Last year, we dropped points against teams who finished between fifth and 12th. And for us this season it is very important that we do not drop points against them.

‘We speak about Burnley – it’s a typical game where last year we dropped points. We cannot afford to and up to now we haven't done it.

‘That’s why the challenge for us is to turn up with the right focus against Burnley because that’s a typical team where last year we would drop some points.

‘We are conscious. You analyse what happened last year and we are conscious that is one of the challenges this year.’

The reverse fixture of today’s game, at Turf Moor in October, saw Arsenal leave it late with Laurent Koscielny netting three minutes into second-half stoppage time for a 1-0 victory.

The Frenchman, wearing the captain’s armband in Per Mertesacker’s absence, has been an emerging leader in the side alongside Shkodran Mustafi.

Summer signing Mustafi has gone 14 Premier League games without defeat this season – more than any other player – and has played a big part in Arsenal’s transformation.

However Wenger is more inspired by the changes at the other end of the pitch. He says, when he looks around on the bench and on the pitch, he has more ‘weapons’ at his disposal than he can remember in many years.

No team has scored more goals than Arsenal in the last five minutes of games, nor is there a side to have benefited more from the contributions of substitutes.

‘I have more weapons,’ Wenger said. ‘Last season at this point we had scored 37 goals in this period, today we have scored 48. That’s a huge difference and that explains the difference.

‘We are the team who has scored more goals than anyone else in the last five minutes and the team who has scored 14 goals with people coming off the bench.’

Wenger is hopeful Danny Welbeck will play for the first time in nine months after injury

Welbeck in training on Saturday as he approaches full fitness after a long term knee problem

One of those substitutes today should be Danny Welbeck, the striker making a long-awaited Emirates return, almost nine months on from his last home appearance after a serious knee injury.

Wenger hopes the former Manchester United forward, at 26 years old, is out of the woods at last after two years of injury hell.

‘I touch wood, hope. He’s not completely out of it,’ he says. ‘It was bone inflammation and that takes a huge time to get completely rid of. You have to be very careful not to have a set-back.

‘You have some players, they have big injuries and you observe them in the first three months and you think: “My friend, you will struggle,” because they always have the handbrake on.

Wenger in conversation with Koscielny, who has captained Arsenal for much of the campaign

‘And some players, they come back and behave like they have never been injured. He is one of them. In his first training session you say “Come on, don’t go in for too much contact straight away”, but he is like that.

‘He is a young promising striker, he has fantastic spirit and you do not see people with that. People sense this, that he has a great spirit. He’s genuine, committed and humble. You do not find that too many times altogether.

‘Maybe, as well, people feel sorry for a guy who basically couldn’t play for two years. This links together — and for me he’s rightly hugely popular.’