Mikel Arteta said he would give up in the Premier League title race “over my dead body” even though he admitted Arsenal face a historically tough challenge to catch Liverpool.
The Gunners, who travel to face high-flying Nottingham Forest on Wednesday, are 11 points behind the runaway leaders after losing to West Ham at the weekend, a day before their rivals won at Manchester City.
The result was a bitter disappointment for Arteta, whose injury-hit team have finished as runners-up to City in each of the past two seasons.
But the bullish Arsenal boss 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.
“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 a number 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.
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.”
