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Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta has told his players to “step up” after their Premier League season continued to fizzle out with a 0-0 draw at Nottingham Forest.
Arteta said ahead of kick off that his side would concede the title “over my dead body” but he may have to accept that their challenge has died a death after this stalemate, which came four days after a home defeat to West Ham.
The toothless Gunners, playing without a recognised striker, managed just one shot on target at the City Ground, with Riccardo Calafiori also hitting the post in the first half.
They are now 13 points behind champions-elect Liverpool and with a severe lack of attacking options, it would take some turnaround for them to leapfrog Arne Slot’s relentless side.
Arteta now appears to be targeting the Champions League, where they play PSV in the last-16 first leg on Tuesday.
The Spaniard said: “Very disappointed not to win it. Today the standards were very different to the previous game. The energy, the willingness to make things happen. We certainly tried many different ways.
“It’s about what we can do. It was like this a week before, two weeks before, three months ago. It’s the same.
“That’s the only thing we can control. We’re going to have a real chance to do anything. Today we dropped two points which is very painful again and we have to step up.
“We have the Champions League, we have a beautiful competition in front of us and we need to be ready for Tuesday.”
With Bukayo Saka, Gabriel Jesus, Gabriel Martinelli and Kai Havertz all in the treatment room, Arteta’s attacking options are limited.
And that was evident at the City Ground where they never really looked like scoring.
“We try and adapt to the qualities they have, how we can help the team to create different things, to have threats from different qualities,” Arteta said.
“It’s a lot to play for and we need to find a solution to unlock it.”
Forest’s surprise challenge for Champions League qualification has hit the buffers with just one win from their last five and they appear to be running out of steam, with Manchester City and Chelsea breathing down their necks.
But this was a good response to the 4-3 defeat at Newcastle and boss Nuno Espirito Santo said the result meant they were “finding themselves as a team again”.
“The most important thing was to realise how we do things, how we play and our strengths. Today it was there,” he said.
“We were compact and didn’t allow Arsenal too much. Arsenal had chances, of course, because they are a very good team. But at the same time, we were compact, solid and aggressive.
“Maybe we could have found better transition points but it is always difficult. The positive is the clean sheet and, more than anything, finding ourselves as a team again with the way we do things.
“In the last moments of the game, we were the team getting the set-pieces and the dangerous momentum. That is a positive, also.”
