The pressure on Mikel Arteta is increasing after Arsenal lost more ground in the Premier League title race on Saturday afternoon.
The Gunners travel to the East Midlands to take on Nottingham Forest at the City Ground on Wednesday afternoon, knowing that a failure to win will all but end their pursuit of the Premier League title.
Liverpool sit eleven points clear of the North Londoners, although they have played a game more than Arteta’s side.
Arsenal were abject against West Ham at the Emirates, and thus there is little optimism heading to the City Ground to face the league’s surprise package.
Calls for Arteta to be sacked have begun to surface, and the Spaniard has hit back at the criticism of him and his team.
Mikel Arteta responds to Arsenal sack claims
Arsenal’s display against West Ham was lacklustre and lacking incisiveness.
However, with the front three that Arteta was forced to field due to injuries, it would be unfair to expect a swash-buckling attacking performance.
Speaking to the media on Tuesday morning ahead of the trip to Nottingham to play Forest, Arteta responded to the critics.
“It’s been incredibly satisfying to work every day with the players, the coaches and the staff to try and overcome certain situations,” he said.
“So, if someone 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, that every individual has. That has been probably at the time one of my 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. I’m not going to stop over my dead body.
“We’ll stop thinking that way and put everything we possibly can to increase that probability of us winning and being better than the opponent, and hitting those performances and standards constantly, regardless of what happens.”
Calls for Mikel Arteta to be sacked at Arsenal are ridiculous
Rio Ferdinand described ‘Arteta out’ calls as a ‘disgrace’, and the former Manchester United manager is valid with this take.
The tactician has taken the Gunners from the depths of despair, battling in mid-table with a broken squad, to competing for the Premier League title and reaching the latter stages of the Champions League year-on-year.
This season may have been frustrating, but Arsenal have been seriously hampered by injury issues and red cards, while Liverpool have enjoyed a relatively stress-free campaign.
Very few teams could cope without four of their forwards, as well as a handful of other injuries scattered across the squad.
A lot of things need to go right to win a Premier League title, and they haven’t gone for the North Londoners this season.
With sufficient investment in the squad in the summer, Arsenal will be back at the top next campaign.
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