Mikel Arteta has insisted he’ll hand over on the title race “over my lifeless physique” and steered Arsenal might have discovered themselves in mid-table this season given their poor disciplinary and damage report.
Arsenal head to third-placed Nottingham Forest on Wednesday trailing the leaders, Liverpool, by 11 factors after surrendering their 15-match unbeaten Premier League run towards West Ham.
Myles Lewis-Skelly will miss the journey to the Metropolis Floor after his purple card on Saturday took Arsenal’s tally for the season to 5, two greater than some other membership. Arteta emphasised he had not given up hope of catching Arne Slot’s aspect but in addition believes ending as runners-up for a 3rd successive season could be an overachievement given the suspensions and accidents his workforce have needed to overcome.
“It’s been extremely satisfying to work every single day with the gamers and the coaches and the employees to attempt to overcome sure conditions,” he mentioned. “So if any person tells you initially of the season: ‘By this time, you might have performed 5 occasions with a purple card over half an hour in every of these video games, and you’ve got misplaced this quantity of gamers,’ what’s the guess? You’re in the course of the desk, a minimum of, you understand, and you might be out of the Champions League.
“That’s not the scenario. In order that tells you the resilience, the sources, the ambition that the workforce has, each particular person has, and that has been in all probability in my time one of many proudest moments to work in that sense. The factor is that when you find yourself there, you need extra and also you need extra and also you need extra. And I’m not going to cease; over my lifeless physique. We’ll cease pondering that method and placing the whole lot that we probably can to extend the likelihood of us profitable and being higher than the opponent and hitting that efficiency and people requirements continuously, no matter what occurs.”
Requested whether or not he nonetheless believed Arsenal might overhaul Liverpool, he mentioned: “If not, I’ll go residence. Mathematically, it’s attainable. You’re there, you must play each recreation. All of the sudden, three days in the past, we might shut the hole and you might be like: ‘You’re one and a half video games away.’ It doesn’t matter. We now have to proceed to go.”
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