Arsenal must block out noise in ‘roller coaster’ title race, says Rice
LONDON, United Kingdom — Arsenal midfielder Declan Rice said his side cannot be distracted by talk of Manchester City closing in at the top of the Premier League, after the Gunners were held 1-1 at Brentford on Thursday.
City are now just four points behind Mikel Arteta’s men and have home advantage when the sides meet in April.
Arsenal are aiming to end a 22-year wait to win the title and appeared to be cruising towards success when they moved nine points clear on Saturday.
However, City’s late fightback to snatch a 2-1 victory at Liverpool on Sunday could prove a turning point in the title race.
Pep Guardiola’s men maintained their momentum by beating Fulham 3-0 in midweek and Arsenal failed to respond.
Noni Madueke gave the visitors the lead in west London, but Brentford hit back through Keane Lewis-Potter and were unfortunate not to claim all three points in the final 20 minutes.
“This is a roller-coaster of a season. You can’t be naive to think this is going to be easy,” said England international Rice.
“We are playing against the best teams week in, week out. We have to keep pushing and believing in ourselves, controlling the controllable.
“We have to block out the outside noise. We have done that really well. People are going to talk up the title race, but we have a really calm group.
“I’m not naive to think Brentford are a pushover. They are one of the best teams in the league and their recent form shows that. It’s a point gained in our journey, but we wanted to win the game.”
Arteta was frustrated at how his side let control of the game get away from them after a positive start to the second half.
“We lacked composure to maintain the ball better, to play in the right areas. We started to give a lot of unnecessary free kicks away,” said Arteta.
Arsenal’s strength from set-pieces has played a huge role in putting them into pole position for the title.
But they struggled to cope with Brentford’s own prowess from dead balls.
The equaliser arrived from one of Michael Kayode’s long-throws, propelled into the box, that Sepp van den Berg flicked on for Lewis Potter to head in.
“They are really good at it, so credit to them as well,” Arteta said.
“They drag you into a game where it’s like a casino. Anything can happen and something really bad can happen!”
