Arteta issues defiant title message as Arsenal trail Liverpool by 11 points

Mikel Arteta insisted he won’t give up chasing the Premier League title ‘over my dead body’ — but believes Arsenal could’ve been midtable ‘at least’ because of injuries and red cards.

The Gunners faced a massive blow to their title hopes last weekend after losing 1-0 to West Ham, as Liverpool beat Manchester City to move 11 points clear having played a game more than Arsenal.

It leaves the north London club’s season at a tricky juncture.

Ahead of Arsenal’s league match against Nottingham Forest on Wednesday, he said: ‘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 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 in 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.’

On whether the recent drop in performance of Martin Odegaard relates to his ankle injury earlier in the season, in which he missed 12 games, Arteta added: ‘We don't know.

'Probably the answer would be no because he came back in such a strong way and performing at a very, very high level. And then just sustaining that over a period of time, like we ask the players to do constantly, especially the creative players, is very difficult.

‘His attitude, how willing he is, the other day with 10 men how he takes responsibility and how he wants to drive the team is remarkable and that's what I demand of the players.

'We need to continue to make things happen and Martin certainly is trying more than anybody else.’

If Arsenal are to pull off a miraculous comeback they will surely need some of their big stars to return as quickly as possible.

Arteta gave an update on the progress of the injured Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli while insisting Ethan Nwaneri was OK after he appeared to be struggling when he was taken off against West Ham.

'Ethan [Nwaneri] was just cramping. His load has been very different in recent weeks so he's fine.

'Bukayo [Saka] and Gabi [Martinelli] are progressing well but a bit far to come back.'