Arteta vows Arsenal will take title race down to the wire

Gunners manger Mikel Arteta has promised that Arsenal will take the Premier League title race to the wire after returning to the top of the table with a comfortable win over Chelsea.

Arsenal led 3-0 inside 34 minutes as Chelsea slumped to a sixth straight defeat in all competitions under Frank Lampard, the worst losing record of any Chelsea manager in over 30 years. Arsenal moved two points clear of Manchester City, who have two matches in hand.

Martin Odegaard scored two nearly identical goals and Gabriel Jesus added the third before Noni Madueke got a consolation after the break. “If we want to have any chance to win the league, we had to win today,” Arteta said. “We needed a result.” When asked if he believed Arsenal could still win the title, he replied: “For sure, we have four games to go and we are top of the league.”

Arsenal, who had dropped nine points in their previous four matches, play away to Newcastle United on Sunday, by which time they could be four points adrift if City win their home games against West Ham United tonight and Leeds United on Saturday.

Arteta urged his players not to have any regrets. “We have to be unsatisfied. We cannot accept that this is good enough for our club and we have to push it further and see where we get,” he said. “The first 60 minutes we played really well. That was everything I wanted to see from our team: speed, quality, movement, two beautiful goals. We created an incredible atmosphere.”

Arsenal will end the season unbeaten in London derbies in the league for the first time since 2004-05. Odegaard, who has a combined 22 goals and assists in the league this season, said the players had a point to prove after the 4-1 defeat by City last week.

 “Everyone was so hurt and we used the anger and the disappointment to get back into this game,” he said. “You can lose games but the way we lost, we weren’t ourselves — that was the most painful thing. We wanted to show a different side [against Chelsea] and we definitely did.”

Lampard has lost his past ten matches across all competitions, including his time at Everton. He said his players lacked mental and physical desire. “It is basic and it is a lot of things: it is mental, the desire to get up to people, but it also starts with the capacity to do it and conditioning,” Lampard said. “The team is low on confidence.

The first-half performance was not good enough in every way. We were nice to play against, nice off the ball, passive, didn’t get pressure off the ball or contact with players. If you play like that you get what you get.”