‘Over my dead body’: Mikel Arteta refuses to give up on Arsenal title fight

Mikel Arteta has insisted he will give up on the title race “over my dead body” and suggested Arsenal could have found themselves in mid-table this season given their poor disciplinary and injury record.

Arsenal head to third-placed Nottingham Forest on Wednesday trailing the leaders, Liverpool, by 11 points after surrendering their 15-match unbeaten Premier League run against West Ham.

Myles Lewis-Skelly will miss the trip to the City Ground after his red card on Saturday took Arsenal’s tally for the season to five, two more than any other club. Arteta emphasised he had not given up hope of catching Arne Slot’s side but also believes finishing as runners-up for a third successive season would be an overachievement given the suspensions and injuries his team have had to overcome.

“It’s been incredibly satisfying to work every day with the players and the coaches and the staff to try to overcome certain situations,” he said. “So if somebody tells you at the start of the season: ‘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, you know, and you are out of the Champions League.

“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 in my time one of the proudest moments to work in that sense. The thing is that when you are there, you want more and you want more and you want more. And I’m not going to stop; over my dead body. We’ll stop thinking that way and putting everything that we possibly can to increase the probability of us winning and being better than the opponent and hitting that performance and those standards constantly, regardless of what happens.”

Asked whether he still believed Arsenal could overhaul Liverpool, he said: “If not, I’ll go home. Mathematically, it’s possible. You are there, you have to play every game. Suddenly, three days ago, we could close the gap and you are like: ‘You are one and a half games away.’ It doesn’t matter. We have to continue to go.”

Arsenal have dropped 10 points in the five games in which they have been shown red cards, although they did manage to beat Wolves when Lewis-Skelly was dismissed at Molineux before his suspension was overturned by the FA. But while he Arteta acknowledged that individuals must take the blame for indiscipline, Arteta also and recognised that it hasd held his team back.

He said: “There are things in certain red cards that we had that we could have done differently. Even though now the rules appear to change again and [have] not considered what it was before. But in other aspects it’s very difficult to change because when you ask the player why they have made that decision, it’s a very spontaneous decision. A very sharp movement or decision-making that caused you the action. It’s very difficult to change that.”

Thomas Tuchel has held talks with Ben White over a potential England recall for the Arsenal defender after hethe Arsenal defender ruled himself out of selection when Gareth Southgate was in charge. White is understood to be open to returning and Arteta seemed to welcome the prospect of himWhite playing international football again.

“That’s a conversation that he and Thomas have to have,” he said. “Whatever they decide will come in great terms and will make sense. It will be the right decision.”