Mikel Arteta insisted that he would not give up the chasing of the Premier League title 'About My Dead Body' – but believes that Arsenal could at least have been mid -table 'due to injuries and red cards.
The Gunners had a huge blow last weekend for their title heap after losing 1-0 to West Ham, while Liverpool beat Manchester City to move 11 points clearly after he played a match more than Arsenal.
It leaves the season of the North London Club at a difficult moment.
In anticipation of Arsenal's League match against Nottingham Forest on Wednesday, he said: 'If someone tells you at the start of the season, by that time you have played five times with a red card more than half an hour in each of those matches , and you have lost this amount of players, what is the bet?
'At least you are in the middle of the table and you are out of the Champions League. That is not the situation.
'So that tells you the resilience, the resources, the ambition that the team has, has every individual and that is probably one of the prospective moments to work in that sense in my time.
'The thing is that when you are there, you want more and you want more and want more. And I'm not going to stop over my dead body.
“In this way we will stop thinking and putting everything in it that we can to increase the chance that we win and be better than the opponent and those performance and those standards are constantly touching, regardless of what happens.”
About whether the recent decrease in the performance of Martin Odegaard relates earlier in the season to his ankle injury, in which he missed 12 games, Arteta added: 'We don't know.
'The answer would probably be no because he returned in such a strong way and performed at a very, very high level. And that then simply maintaining a period of time, as we ask the players to constantly do, especially the creative players, is very difficult.
'His attitude, how prepared he is, recently with 10 men how he takes responsibility and how he wants to manage the team is remarkable and that is what I demand from the players.
“We must keep happening and Martin certainly tries more than anyone.”
If Arsenal has to get a wonderful comeback, they certainly 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 he insisted that Ethan was Nwaneri Ok after he seemed to struggle when he was collected against West Ham.
'Ethan [Nwaneri] Was just cramp. His load has been very different in recent weeks, so he is doing well.
'Bukayo [Saka] and Gabi [Martinelli] progresses well, but a bit far to come back. '
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