Despite witnessing his Arsenal team being dismantled by a dominant Manchester City, Mikel Arteta remains determined to fight on in the Premier League title race.
Pep Guardiola’s squad, led by Kevin De Bruyne, John Stones, and Erling Haaland, secured a 4-1 victory over the Gunners on Wednesday, bringing City within two points of the Premier League leaders with two matches in hand.
According to Opta, City now has a 92 percent probability of winning the league, while Arsenal’s chances are just eight percent. Nonetheless, Arteta is refusing to abandon his optimism.
“It’s a very difficult night, obviously after the way we lost,” he told BT Sport.
“But we have to stand up, look at the bigger picture and the way we are competing toe-to-toe with this team. It’s incredible, to be fair, and we want to compete, we’re not going to give up.
“There’s five games to go, anything can happen and I’ve seen a lot of things happen over 20 years. You have to believe that, we have to look in the mirror and accept that we have lost against an exceptional team.”
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City were brilliant throughout. De Bruyne put them ahead after just seven minutes, before teeing up Stones to add a second on the stroke of half-time.
De Bruyne’s second wrapped matters up early in the second half, with Rob Holding striking a consolation before Haaland got in on the act, surpassing Mohamed Salah’s record of 32 goals in a 38-game Premier League season in the process.
“We were beaten by the better team, that’s for sure,” said Arteta.
“They were exceptional and when that’s the case, it’s difficult to reach that level, and we were nowhere near our level, especially in the first half – when you open that gap, you get punished.
“When you have it in one corner and they kick it 60 yards, they win that duel, they run through you – you have to start competing, winning your duels and all the basic things. We didn’t do them in the first half.
“The way we were in the first 20, 30 minutes, they were on top of us, we could not handle the situation. They were being extremely direct, we knew they had the capacity to do that because they can stretch the pitch. We had to compete but we lost it straight away.“
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