Mikel Arteta insisted that his Arsenal side would give up the title race “About My Dead Body” on Tuesday – but two days later and it could be out of their reach.
The Gunners are now 13 points behind Liverpool After a difficult week, she dropped five points and did not score for two games.
After two seasons of stumbling at the last obstacle after leading the peloton, Arsenal caught an unknown land while the pursuers this period.
But in a week when their title Rivals Liverpool was confronted with three Top Premier League parties and the risk of opening the door, Arsenal was unable to exercise the Reds on the Reds – falling points to West Ham and Nottingham Forest.
Arsenal could have closed the gap on the Anfield outfit to only five points if they had used Liverpool with Aston Villa last week.
But instead, they stumbled their way to a 1-0 defeat at home through the wrestling Hamers-Die end an unbeaten run of 15 games in the Premier League.
That loss was then exacerbated by a scoreless draw against Nottingham Forest on Wednesday evening, which means that Arsenal has only picked up one point of six available.
Since that draw, Liverpool has also played two games with Villa and defeated both Manchester City and Newcastle United with relative convenience.
It is purely hypothetical, but if Arsenal had won both their matches and Liverpool had lost to one of Man City of Newcastle – who was not outside the rich of the possibility – Arteta's side could have been only five points behind with a game in hand.
Arsenal trail nowhere with 13 points and is actually closer to the 10th placed villa (12 points ahead) than to Liverpool.
In fact, this season, their role as pursuers led them not to spend a single day on top of the tree.
Even the 14th placed Manchester United spent more days on the table (one) than Arsenal for more days.
Arsenal of course fights front line without one of their first choice.
Injuries to Gabriel Martinelli, Bukayo Saka and Kai Havertz have led to a serious lack of threat to the goal.
So much so that Arsenal has only managed three shots on goal over both games with Forest and West Ham.
And they were able to score for the first time since May 2023 in successive Premier League matches.
Their impressive defense has enabled them to grind draws, despite their lack of a powerful goal scorer.
In fact, they have already pulled the competition nine times this season, their highest number since the 2019/20 season.
Mikel Arteta has not apologized this season about the shortcomings of his team and has the fact that, despite injuries, that title -winning spark misses.
But he still does not give up and looks at European success instead.
He said: “It's about what we can do, and it was a week ago, two weeks earlier, three months ago.
“That is all we can control if we want to have the chance to do something.
“Today we dropped two points, which is very painful and we have to perform – we have the Champions League, we have a wonderful competition for us and we have to be ready for Tuesday.”
Arsenal will take on PSV Eindhoven in the last 16 of the Champions League on Tuesday, after the action of the weekend after their elimination of the FA Cup to Man Utd in January.
But they will still have a real attacking threat to that collision after Arteta has revealed that Saka and Martinelli are expected to be sidelined until April, while Havertz will not return this season.
However, it is difficult to point out the finger too much of the injuries.
That is because Arsenal knew that their forward options were thinly on their way to the January transfer window and still chose to ignore their attacking shortcomings.
Now the Gunners seem to be entirely out of any form of title race – apart from a monumental collapse – and instead are struggling with Forest, Bournemouth, Chelsea, Newcastle and Man City for a place in the Champions League.
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