‘Arsenal still fighting for title’: Arteta challenges Liverpool despite West Ham setback

Arsenal might be 11 points behind Premier League leaders Liverpool but Mikel Arteta has insisted that his side are still in the title race.

The Gunners lost at home 1-0 to West Ham United on Saturday with Liverpool ending the weekend with an emphatic 2-0 victory over defending champion Manchester City.

Arsenal’s loss to West Ham was a bitter disappointment for Arteta, whose injury-hit team have finished as runners-up to City in each of the past two seasons.

Despite the huge setback, Arteta told his pre-match press conference on Tuesday that he would give up the title challenge “over my dead body”.

The Spaniard said he would “go home” if he no longer believed the Gunners could catch Arne Slot’s Liverpool.

The Arsenal team huddle before a match. (Photo by Alex Dodd – CameraSport via Getty Images)

“Mathematically it’s possible. You are there, you have to play every game,” he said.

But Arteta admitted the enormous scale of the task as Arsenal chase their first Premier League title since 2004.

“If you’re going to win this Premier League with the circumstances that we have, you’re probably going to have to do something nobody else has done in the history of the Premier League,” he said.

He added: “In the end, you are going to have to set an amount of numbers to win in this league, and we’re going to have to hit that number if we are going to have any chance of doing that. “But we are certainly going to continue to try.”

Arsenal, who have a game in hand over Liverpool, have been derailed by a series of injuries, particularly in forward areas.

Kai Havertz and Gabriel Jesus are out for the season while Bukayo Saka is due to return next month having been sidelined since December and Gabriel Martinelli is also currently unavailable.

Captain Martin Odegaard missed 12 games with an ankle injury earlier in the campaign. Ben White recently returned from his injury layoff while Tomiyasu might not feature again this season.

Arteta said he was proud of his team’s resilience and ambition, saying the 1-0 home defeat to West Ham had been a “very hard one to take”.

But he added: “The reality is there are so many games to play, and you have to get back to it.

“You have to have the levels and the consistency and the hunger to go again, and that’s what we are going to do on Wednesday.”

Arsenal will travel to face high-flying Nottingham Forest on Wednesday knowing victory is needed to put pressure on Arne Slot’s Liverpool.