Mikel Arteta has struck a defiant tone after a damaging weekend in the Premier League title race, saying Arsenal would give up the fight “over my dead body”.
The Gunners missed the chance to close the gap on Liverpool on Saturday, losing to West Ham, before Arne Slot’s Reds beat Manchester City the following day to go 11 points clear at the top of the table.
Many commentators conceded the title to Liverpool after their victory – but Arteta is in no such mood to exit the race.
“It’s been incredibly satisfying to work every day with the players and the staff to try to overcome certain situations,” he said ahead of Wednesday’s game against Nottingham Forest.
“If someone tells you at the start of the season that by this time, you have played five times with a red card with over half an hour in each game and you’ve lost this amount of players [to injury], what’s the bet you are in the middle of the table at least and out of the Champions League.
“But that’s not the situation and it tells you about the resilience and ambition that the team has. That has been probably one of my proudest moments in that sense. When you’re there, you want more.
FREE TO WATCH: Highlights from Arsenal’s match against West Ham in the Premier League
“And over my dead body will we stop thinking that way and putting everything we possibly can to improve that.”
When asked if he believed Arsenal could still win the Premier League, Arteta replied: “If we can’t, I might as well go home.
“Mathematically, it’s possible, you are there and you have to play every game. Three days ago, we could close the gap and you are one-and-a-half games away, but it doesn’t matter. We have to continue to go.
“If you want to win the Premier League, you have to do something special. If you want to win it with the circumstances we have, you probably have to do something no one else has done in the history of the Premier League.”
FREE TO WATCH: Highlights from Man City’s match against Liverpool in the Premier League
Heading into the game against West Ham, Arsenal were unbeaten in 15 Premier League matches. Despite the setback against the Hammers, Arteta was keen to point out how his side had been matching Liverpool over that period in difficult circumstances.
He said: “In the previous 15 games, we have won 10 and drawn five, exactly the same as Liverpool with the same goal difference, which is plus 23.
“We’ve been extremely consistent for the last three-and-a-half months, considering everything we’ve been through and we generated that momentum.
“It was that weekend where we have to go again, nothing different to the previous 15 and we got a defeat. On top of that, they won so when you are trying to build momentum, and we put so much into it with the circumstances that we had, it was a very hard one to take.
“The reality is there are so many games to play that you have to get back to it. We have the levels and consistency and hunger to go again and that’s what we’ll do on Wednesday.”
