By Nurudeen Obalola
Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta has insisted that his side can still win the English Premier League title this season despite being behind leaders Liverpool by 11 points.
The Gunners slipped up on Saturday by losing 1-0 at home to struggling West Ham, while Liverpool secured a comfortable 2-0 win at champions Manchester City the following day to widen the gap at the top.
During his pre-match press conference on Tuesday ahead of Wednesday’s trip to third-place Nottingham Forest Arteta was asked if he had given up on Arsenal winning their first Premier League title since 2004.
“Over my dead body,” the Spaniard replied. “If it’s not (possible) I will go home. Mathematically it is possible. You are there, you have to play every game, suddenly three days ago we could close a gap and you are like ‘you are one-and-a-half games away’. It doesn’t matter, we have to continue to go.
“The difficulty is higher than three days ago, but if you are going to win the Premier League you have to do something special. If you are going to win the Premier League with the circumstances we have you will probably have to do something that nobody else has done in the history of the Premier League.”
The former Arsenal and Everton midfielder however admitted that he was gutted by the turn of events at the weekend and its impact on the title race.
“It was a very disappointing weekend. The previous 15 games we had won 10 and drawn five – exactly the same as Liverpool with exactly the same goal difference,” Arteta noted.
“So we have been extremely consistent over the last three months considering everything we have been through. We have generated that momentum and it was that weekend where we have to go again but we got a defeat. On top of that they [Liverpool] win.
“When you are trying to beat that momentum and we put so much into it with the circumstances that we have, it was a really hard one to take. The reality is there are so many games to play and you have to get back to it.”
The 42-year-old Arteta took over from Unai Emery in the middle of the 2019/2020 campaign and went on to win the FA Cup, but has failed to add another major trophy since, with Arsenal finishing second in the league the last two seasons.
