Mikel Arteta makes title race vow and insists Arsenal will give up ‘over my dead body’

Arsenal’s hopes of hauling in Liverpool were dented by a defeat to West Ham and Arteta admits his side now need ‘something special’

Mikel Arteta has insisted that his side will fight on in the title race (Getty Images)

Mikel Arteta said he would concede the Premier League title to Liverpool "over my dead body" as he insisted Arsenal can still be crowned champions.

The Gunners head to Nottingham Forest on Wednesday 11 points adrift of Liverpool following the Reds' weekend victory at Manchester City, a day after Arteta's side slumped to a 1-0 loss against West Ham at the Emirates.

Following the defeat to the Hammers - after which he criticised his players for failing to reach the standards required to end the club's 21-year wait for the title - Arteta conceded the championship race was no longer in his hands.

But speaking on the eve of Arsenal's trip to third-placed Forest, the Spaniard said: "I'm not going to stop, over my dead body.

"If I think that way, 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 to five points. It doesn't matter. We have to continue to go.

"The difficulty is higher than it was. But if you want to win the the Premier League, you're going to have to do something special. You're probably going to have to do something that nobody else has done in the history of the Premier League."

Arsenal's bid to win the title has been derailed by a series of injuries, with Kai Havertz and Gabriel Jesus out for the season. Bukayo Saka is due to return next month having been sidelined since December, while Gabriel Martinelli is also currently unavailable.

Captain Martin Odegaard missed 12 games with an ankle injury earlier in the campaign, while Arsenal have also battled suspensions. Five players have been sent off in their 26 league games so far.

Arsenal’s title hopes were dealt a potentially fatal blow by West Ham (PA Wire)

The Gunners have been Liverpool's closest challengers this season, and have progressed to the last 16 of the Champions League, but Arteta believes his side could easily have been dumped out of Europe and left battling in mid-table.

He continued: "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, 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 been one of the proudest moments in my time to work.

"It was a very disappointing weekend. In the previous 15 games, we have won 10 and drawn five.

"We have been extremely consistent for the last three and a half months, considering everything that we've been through, and we have generated that momentum.

"When you are trying to build that momentum and we're putting so much into it, especially with the circumstances that we have, the defeat against West Ham was a very hard one to take. On top of that, they (Liverpool) win.

"But the reality is that there's so many games to play, and you have to get back to it. You're going to have to set a certain amount of numbers to win this league.

"And we're going to have to hit that number if we're going to have any chance of doing that. But we're certainly going to continue to try."

PA