Mikel Arteta has insisted Arsenal are still contenders for the Premier League title despite slipping from the top of the table at the weekend. Arteta’s men were replaced at the summit by Manchester City following the champions’ 2-1 win at Fulham on Sunday.City now lead the Gunners by a point, with a game in hand, after winning eight successive league matches as they eye a fifth title in six years. Arsenal, by contrast, have stumbled in recent weeks, taking just three points from their last four fixtures. They are at least assured of a return to Champions League football after a six-season absence from Europe’s leading club competition, but Arteta stressed the Gunners’ squad were not satisfied with that achievement alone.Arteta now wants Arsenal, beaten 4-1 by City last week, to stage a revival when they face London rivals Chelsea at the Emirates today. "We have achieved what it was difficult to achieve and we can still achieve the Premier league because there are five games to go and a lot of things are going to happen still,” he said."Now the title race is not in our hands anymore. What is in our hands is to try to win the games we have left and the rest is down to City. What we have to do is forget about what happened last week, learn from it and move on to the next game with a full tilt at home, with our people, London derby, and put things right.”The Spaniard added: "We still have the nicest part of the season to play with five games to go. But when I still look at it, this is not over. "I am incredibly proud and thankful to everyone who has contributed to bringing Champions League football back to this club with five or six games to go, it is something that hasn’t happened in over a decade in this football club. So congratulations but also thank you for still being upset and not accepting that Champions League is not enough and we want more because this squad is going to demand to get what we want.”Chelsea can learn from Arsenal rebuild, says LampardArsenal’s recent success in the Premier League could provide the blueprint for Chelsea’s bid to rebuild after a disappointing campaign, interim manager Frank Lampard said ahead of the sides’ meeting. Chelsea’s 2-0 defeat by Brentford last week left them 12th in the standings, stumbling towards possibly their worst campaign since the 1993-94 season - when they finished 14th under Glenn Hoddle - despite their new U.S. owners’ huge outlay.Today, Chelsea face an Arsenal side that finished outside the top four for six straight seasons between 2016-2022, but currently find themselves locked in an intense title race after significant improvement under manager Mikel Arteta. "There is a long process in terms of getting to where you want to get to. I remember going up against Mikel in that early stage,” Lampard told reporters ahead of the trip to the Emirates Stadium."Sometimes they played five at the back, sometimes four; now they have a clear identity. There has been a lot of work through the team, Mikel, alignment and good recruitment. Do we have the possibility to do that? Yes. Will it take time and good decisions? Absolutely, yes. But you can get there. The manager was being questioned, the players and owners were and that process can take two or three years. They are a great example of that done well.”Lampard conceded that Chelsea’s players are "low on confidence” due to their poor run of form, but challenged his side to counteract their lack of self belief with hard work. "You can only work to get a level of performance to bring confidence back,” Lampard said."I’ve been here in moments where confidence has been low because nobody likes losing games. I had moments as a player where we dropped our standards as a collective and we had to lift it. Looking through history, we managed to get it back through hard work. "We can only consider the future and work really hard to get the squad where we want it.”Lampard added that defender Kalidou Koulibaly could be "out for a while” after injuring his hamstring against Real Madrid in the Champions League.
May 01, 2023 | 11:45 PM