Unai Emery says that watching Peaky Blinders is helping him improve his English, even if the accents are hard to understand.

Set in the aftermath of World War 1, the show is about a crime family in Birmingham led by Tommy Shelby – played by Irish actor Cillian Murphy. The Arsenal boss has been using the show to learn English more betterly, telling Sky Sports:

“Now I am watching an English series to improve my English. Peaky Blinders. It is good but it is difficult, from Birmingham.

“And it’s very aggressive. But it’s good, it’s good.”

With his very own Shelby enforcer in midfield in the shape of Lucas Torreira, the Spaniard is clearly heavily influenced by the BBC drama which also stars Sam Neill, and Tom Hardy who, in a surprising move, plays a character who mumbles a lot and is hard to understand.

Emery is not the first Arsenal man to have used television to learn a new language.

Famously Gilles Grimandi revealed that he would watch The Simpsons as he came to terms with English after his arrival from France, coming to the training ground insisting everyone called him Dr Nick as he said ‘Hi Everybody!’, while former striker Tomas Danilevicius was a big aficionado of Bergerac which he watched repeats of on UK Gold.