Robber who ambushed PL stars in car-jacking bemoans missing out on £1m in watch

A robber who was jailed for ambushing Arsenal stars Mesut Ozil and Sead Kolasinac in 2019 has complained about missing a slew of expensive watches, insisting: 'You win some, you lose some .'

In a stunning interview, Ashley Smith recalls the day he and his accomplice Jordan Northover confronted the footballers – with the latter wielding a knitting needle.

Kolasinac stood up to the robbers and fended them off before running away on a motorcycle. Ozil and his wife Amine were in the car.

Smith was sentenced to 10 years in prison in November 2019 after trying to steal luxury watches worth £200,000 – although he claims they were worth more than £1 million.

He recalled his disappointment at the failure of the robbery, but rather blasphemingly emphasized that 'you can't cry over spilled milk'.

'I was on the run. I was wanted for a recall. I had a fight with my mother, I cut off my label. So my co-D called me and said, “I'm on the run too. Let's go.” He says, 'Do you have a bev?', I said, 'cool,'” Smith told the BlueTick Show.

“So I'm like, come meet me. One evening we jumped on our bikes and did whatever it was we were doing. Made about… it was stupid change, actually, they were young peas.

“But I said, park up, he said, 'No, let's stay outside for another half hour.' While driving I saw Mesut Ozil, Kolasinac, pull up next to the G-wagon.

“Yeah, my co-D tried to grab it, but it went to the left. Yes, it went to the left. We missed the belly that day. But you win some, you lose some, you know?

'To be honest, I don't even want to talk about the figures. 150 easy, minimum. There were three RMs in that car that day, five-carat Kim Kardashian….”

'So, what, a million pounds worth of s*** there, half a million pounds?' the host asked.

Smith replied, “Easy, easy. Just the watches. Yes, that would have been it (the biggest robbery I had committed). I've had some big ones and some little ones. It's the luck of the draw. You don't know what you're going to get.

'It wasn't even a knife, it was a knitting needle! When we saw it, our eyes, we didn't even think. It looked like the stomach. We got too hungry. It wasn't the way we planned it.

'Everyone thinks it was a knife, it was a knitting needle. It was in the backpack, innit. That's to get something – you use the knitting needle to crochet keys, innit.

“When I pulled up next to him, the guy was a lump. My fellow D was a wild one. It's on, it's gone. We got away. We parked, took ourselves home and left. I was furious, I was upset. However, it happens. You can't cry over spilled milk.

'To make a long story short, I got ten years in prison for that. I didn't even make a pound note. I was involved, I was a driver.'

CCTV footage of the attack showed Smith's accomplice Northover pulling the gun on Kolasinac and using it to stab his face and neck – but the hard man didn't flinch as he faced the robbers and tried to knock them out .

As the robbers panicked, Mr Ozil shouted at his teammate to 'jump in', sparking a miles-long high-speed chase through north London.

Eventually the 4×4 was left outside a Golders Green Turkish restaurant, where the footballers and Ms Ozil ran inside and called the police.