Mikel Arteta says his players still believe they can win the title despite Manchester City leapfrogging Arsenal in the table with a 3-1 win at Emirates Stadium.
The Gunners came into the game hoping to stamp their authority on the title race but fell apart in the second half as goals from Jack Grealish and Erling Haaland sealed the three points for Pep Guardiola’s side.
Having gifted Kevin de Bruyne with the opening goal, Arsenal displayed real heart and energy to get back in the game before the break and deservedly equalised via Bukayo Saka’s penalty after goalkeeper Ederson had clattered into Eddie Nketiah.
The home side couldn’t maintain that momentum after the break as the reigning champions pressed higher and harder forcing costly mistakes as the Gunners tried to work the ball out from the back.
“A huge battle – a battle that, especially until we conceded second goal, we had them – we had the feeling we could beat them but we gave them three goals and the game at the end,” Arteta told BBC Sport.
“We made certain errors at this level you can’t make. The team put the level very high at the same time.
“They were playing long balls and we suffered to get out of those zones and didn’t read the situation well enough, they punished us.”
On the title race, he added: “I have more belief than I had before the game, with the performance and the level the team put in against City. They wanted to play a different game than the one we played and with the crowd we have we can do it.
“They still have it [the belief], I can sense it. They feel they can do it.
“The difference was in the boxes, they had three chances and they put them away. We had chances and we didn’t put them away.”
I still don’t understand people being fixated on the title race. Wasn’t realistic even when we were up 5-8 points, definitely not relistic now. We might have gotten carried away but reality seems to be places 2-4.
Being top at the halfway point of the season and you wonder why people are talking about a title race? Arsenal will learn more from this game than City and the team has more room for improvement than City. This is a wobble and I’m backing Arsenal to bounce back. Still have a game in hand as well.
Lol why are the negative ppl the first to comment 😂
I still believe, still in our own hands!
I think it’s more difficult but not impossible.
However, we need to start taking it game by game, get back to winning ways against Villa, and neither think nor talk about the title much.
Remember, the goal for this season is top 4. Winning the league would be way beyond expectations. Enjoy the ride. OH, and the EL is also a realistic target.
We need United and City to both hit bad spells, there’s plenty of time for that to happen still.
I don’t think many are fixated or delusional, but who doesn’t want to win the title?! The dreams may well end in disappointment, I know that, but still we can enjoy (enjoy might be the wrong adjective here) the ride. Stranger things have happened in the past (Leicester) but nobody is blind to the strength City have. We will need a good slice of luck on our side.
What I’d say is that it’s possible to hold both perspectives. As a fan in the ground you’ve got to support the team as if winning the league is delusional, otherwise it leads to negativity which didn’t exist when we were thinking top 4 would be amazing. The home support has been incredible this season, but I think we have to accept it could have been a lot better after City’s second yesterday and both before we scored and after they ‘scored’ vs Brentford.
At the moment, we should be worried about Man Utd not City.
We made a mistake in the January transfer window not bringing in the needed players which is costing us dearly.
2 goals in 4 matches is poor for a side that wants to win the league. Arteta should take a rest, these boys has reached their limits
Pathetic fan
To be fair we nearly spent £80million on a player that ran a 37 year old ragged but has since been running up his own arse.
Nah, our system and coaching are more developed than Chelsea’s at the moment. It’s not hard to see how, if we’d signed him and integrated him into our set-up, he’d be very capable of putting the shits up a lot of defenders. I don’t blame us for not signing him mind, I think we did what was reasonable in the circumstances, but you can see why we wanted him. That said, I do wish Arteta had a bit more trust in or willingness to use his bench players more quickly. Guardiola has a lot more tactical flexibility as it stands,… Read more »
Trossard has been decent when he’s played. And Jorghino was pretty good tonight on very short notice.
I’d say that based on the small sample size so far, we did OK during the winter. Certainly better so far than the players for which Chelsea spent a huge amount.
I’d agree on signings. I think the big mistake Arteta has made is lack of rotation. I can’t believe Trossard hasn’t started any of the last 3 games & KT hasn’t played a single minute of them even though Zinny’s level has dropped & he is making bad mistakes. (got away with one awful mistake tonight at 1-1 & he was very poor for Haaland’s goal, as he was for Toney’s, albeit it should have been disallowed) Everton game in particular was crying out for KT to give us something different. Not just Zinny though, mistakes creeping in throughout cos… Read more »
The spud fan is back
This comment is realistic and correct. You have to be blind to not think we’ll be in a race for third in April. If we want a positive sub, all we can do is swap Martinelli for Trossard. Tierney would be another positive sub, but Arteta won’t play him. Jorginho and Viera are a step down when they’re in. Smith-Rowe is fragile, so don’t expect much from him an I’d be surprised to see Jesus before May.
The old Dunkirk spirit. Great stuff.
Take a rest? We have over archived and we should be extremely proud to even be good in a title race. Before the season started we would have jumped at the chance of finishing 4th. We just have to admit Man City are the better team and winning the title is not impossible this season but not realistic. My expectations were low start of the season so I am actually very proud of the team.
We are not at City’s level for a full 90 yet. But we are getting closer. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. Let’s see how Arteta manages the squad from here on out. He has hinted that this was a game to see how the 11 who brought us to this point faired against City. Now we know and the Manager and players need to respond.
Yeah, if only we’d paid £200m for Mudryck, we wouldn’t have made tonight’s defensive errors and we’d still be top of the league.
Every team tends to have a slump, praying this will be the end of ours.
Still in our hands, we’ve a game in hand, but we need to ensure that we match or better City’s results until the end of the season.
Still only lost 3 games, but we need a win and to build some momentum again.
Still have belief in this side that we can do it.
COYG!
I love the reaction after the first city goal, no feeling sorry for ourselves just straight back in their faces. Could’ve been 3-1 up by half time. That’s what gives me hope.
Unfortunately even if you win the game in hand and you lose to City at the Etihad, the title goes to City if both don’t drop more points till end of the season.
We cant really have any complaints tonight.. To beat that City team, we needed all of our players playing at their best for the entire game, and to lose Partey right before kick off made the task even more difficult. For once we actually got some really marginal calls fall our way in a big game, I’d say we were really lucky to get that penalty in the first half — it was really soft. It felt like we really put in a huge shift to even get that opportunity for the penalty to happen and City were just sat… Read more »
When City were in a slump, they had a few referee calls help them out. When we were flying, we had a LOT of calls pull us back (man u goal disallowed, newcastle pen not reviewed, southampton pen not reviewed, toney offside goal). Now that we’re in a slump (running out of attacking ideas now that poor teams are playing a low block tends to stop us dead) and city are flying, I can see city pull away pretty quickly now. They have a tough little run after their next two games, so we need to get back into form… Read more »
We are 99.9% as good as City, which in itself is a massive achievement. We just made mistakes for those 0.1% and the City machine always takes advantage and punishes you. They just do not make the type of mistakes we did, but that is what happens when you play with younger players rather than just buying the finished product.
City will lose or draw again this year, they are not the unstoppable machine they have been in the past. We just need to focus on getting our game going after a few bad results.
99.9 is pretty generous. I’d say 90%. We had barely any quality shots on target and made numerous defensive mistakes because the plan was pretty clearly to play out of the back at all costs.
We are good, but I wouldn’t say we are as good as City. I think if we finish 2nd or 3rd, it’s a fair position considering our season so far. It’s a pity we’ve done worse in the past 3 weeks than we have all season and we said after the Everton game that our reaction to the loss will define our season. Well, turns out our reaction was to score one goal from open play and lose a 6 point lead. It’s nice to be positive but we need to be realistic too.
We INSISTED on playing out of the back… slowly. You cannot do that against city. Everyone in the stadium could sense a mistake was coming and it came twice and city buried their chances. Mind boggling that we’re playing tiki taka in our own box and Gabriel is attempting to go 1 on 1 with Haaland when he should just boot the ball out of play and wait for reinforcements.
Hard to find the level of your team if you have been punishing everyone in the league, except the 3 teams that played low blocks, and you don’t play the players and system that got you to this point. Now the Manager knows the level and I expect him to make decisions for the rest of the season with this knowledge in mind. We learn, we move, we adjust, we play CL next season. Always been the goal.
A member of the Ginyu Force getting a goal was most disappointing.
Let’s look at the bigger picture, if you told me we would be challengers at the start of this season to win PL i would of said you were nuts, a 4th place CL qualifying one and being above spurz would of been the best i could wish for, to be disappointed to be knocked off our perch on same points with a game in hand v PL champions shows how far we have come in a short amount of time, tonight we needed all our players to have an 8 out of 10 game sadly we paid a price… Read more »
I like Arteta but he frustrates me! He is so one dimensional. Pep knows how to rejig a formation to make it work. Nketia is out of sorts. Trossard should have started. 3 at the back, white,saliba and Gabriel. Zichenko on left mid with smith-rowe (who could have played against Brentford) then odergaard and xhaka. Arteta must learn more from his tutor. He must be more tactically ballsey as pep was. We need to beat villa if we don’t the title is down the tubes. It’s been coming since the Everton game. Arteta cannot expect to play his slick brand… Read more »
Smith Rowe is injured. I’m sure everyone, including Mikel Arteta will be delighted when he’s back and able to help out. Please keep up, do you actually support the club?
Unai Emery’s Villa, a resurgent Leicester and a certain low block Everton at the Emirates, all within the next fourteen days, with Partey out and Nketiah still leading the line, I fear we may drop off the title race completely by the time we play Bournemouth.
Trying times.
And that’s 9 points in the kitty for the Arsenal.
Youngest team, youngest coach, it is unbelievable what we’ve done this season. That we’re gutted we’re second mid February after losing to the best team in the world is simply phenomenal how far we’ve come at such a short time. I’m proud of the boys, any critic I have is small and is for that moment Arteta tried to waste time and how he put himself in a position beneath himself and his standards. I know Arteta as the man who plays to win every single match, time wasting while we’re drawing a match at home is not a good… Read more »
if you’re referring to him blocking off KDB that isn’t time-wasting to keep the score the same, it’s to prevent City from getting a quick throw-in while Arsenal is still out of their defensive shape.
You don’t plug holes after the ship has sunk! Arteta made substitutions too late. Arteta should have matched like for like or even gone 3-5-2 with martinelli and Trossard up front.
The players are still dreaming of the title. Get behind your team and dream!