‘Over my dead body’

Boss Mikel Arteta hits back when asked if Arsenal are out of EPL title race due to 11-pt gap with leaders Liverpool; face 3rd-placed Nottingham Forest tonight

Eleven points off the lead. An injury-ravaged forward line. Yet another player suspended after getting sent off. Surely it’s too much for Arsenal to win the Premier League title now? Not according to their manager Mikel Arteta. “Over my dead body,” said the Arsenal boss, who came out fighting on Tuesday when asked if he might be ready to concede the title to Liverpool. “If not, I go home. Mathematically, it is possible. You are there, you have to play every game,” he added.

Arsenal’s chances of a first top-flight championship since 2004 were massively damaged, though, on a sobering weekend when Arteta’s second-place team stumbled to a 0-1 home loss to West Ham United on Saturday and first-place Liverpool won 2-0 at Manchester City on Sunday. Just when there seemed to be life in the title race, Liverpool powered into an 11-point lead over Arsenal — having played one game more — and are reaching the end of a difficult run of five league games in a 15-day stretch culminating in a home match against Newcastle on Wednesday.

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On the same night, Arsenal visit third-place Nottingham Forest and will still be without its four best attacking players — Bukayo Saka, Kai Havertz, Gabriel Martinelli and Gabriel Jesus — because of injury. Another absentee will be left back Myles Lewis-Skelly, who is suspended after his red card against West Ham United. Arsenal have received five red cards this season, two more than any other team. Given the circumstances, Arteta said his players “have to do something nobody else has done in the history of the Premier League” to win the title this season.

“If somebody tells you at the start of the season that by this time, you have played five times with a red card over half-an-hour in each of those games, and you have lost this amount of players, what’s the bet? You are in the middle of the table, at least, and you are out of the Champions League. But that’s not the situation. So that tells you the resilience, the resources, the ambition that the team has, every individual has, and that has been probably one of the proudest moments in my time working  [here], said Arteta.

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