Mikel Arteta: Arsenal still in the EPL race

Gunners manager Mikel Arteta has told his Arsenal players that they can still win the Premier League title after they beat Newcastle United 2-0 and moved to within one point of leaders Manchester City.

“The prize is there, not too far,” Arteta said. “It’s keep going and see what happens. The only thing we can do is not turn our backs and lose focus. We did what the game demanded and that was really smart from us.”

A frustrated Eddie Howe was critical of Arsenal’s time-wasting tactics and the lack of control from the referee after his Newcastle side failed to pull clear of their top-four rivals.

The win for Arsenal turned the heat back up on leaders City but the defeat for Newcastle, though, leaves them just three points clear of fifth-placed Liverpool. In total 11 minutes of stoppage time were added and Howe was seemingly unimpressed by the performance of Chris Kavanagh, the referee.

“They slowed it down and there were lots of breaks in play, it was frustrating for us,” Howe said. “Naturally we wanted the ball in play more, especially when you are chasing the game. We have to look at what we can control. We can’t control that, that’s the referee’s job.”

Howe was asked about the fact Granit Xhaka went down five times for treatment during the game.

“That’s a difficult one for me to answer,” he said. “It was frustrating. We wanted the ball in play, we wanted to find our rhythm. It was very stop-start. That was suiting, of course, the away team. As the home team, you want the ball in play.

 “I don’t want to go too much into the game-management side of the game, I want to look at our performance and how we can improve it. That’s certainly what I’ll do. I’m aware of what you’re discussing. That happened in the game, of course it did, everyone who watched the game could see it, but we need to control what we can control.

“It can be a really memorable season for us. It’s in our hands.”

When asked if Kavanagh had affected the flow of the game, he added: “Probably best I don’t comment on that.”

Arteta had shown frustration in the corresponding fixture at the Emirates this season when Newcastle were accused of slowing the game down, but the Spaniard was adamant that his team had not adopted the same tactic, although he would not be drawn on Xhaka.

“For sure our team is not like that,” Arteta said. “We have done what we had to do to win and I am very happy.

“I don’t want to get close to that conversation. Game management is something huge the way they play and we had to do that even better than them.”

Arteta revealed that he had shown his players his angry dressing-room reaction in the All Or Nothing series after the loss away to Newcastle last season on the morning of the game.

“We had to feel it,” he said. “It wasn’t enough just to talk about it, we had to feel it, we had to see it, we had to recognise our faces. That’s football.

“You can win or lose, but that feeling that we didn’t do enough on the day, we had to put it right. The word was pain and then the desire for revenge. I think they had that today in their bellies.”