Arteta: If you can’t handle title pressure, leave the club | OneFootball

Mikel Arteta has told anyone who can’t handle the pressure of the title race to “go and do something else”, insisting this is what it takes to be successful.

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The pressure on Arsenal is ramping up with each passing week, with increasing expectation that the Gunners will get their hands on trophies before this season ends.

That pressure seemed to have a negative effect on the team in midweek, as Arsenal threw away a 2-0 lead against the Premier League’s bottom club Wolves to draw. With Manchester City winning on Saturday, the gap at the top of the table is now just two points.

Speaking in his pre-Tottenham Hotspur press conference, Mikel Arteta responded to a question about how Arsenal should manage the noise around them at the moment.

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“Ask yourself a question, do you want to be part of the noise or not?” Arteta responded. “If not, go and do something else, be part of another, different club.

“You want to be Arsenal, and everybody’s been demanding for 10 years, 15 years, [saying] ‘we need to go back there’. Now we are there, and now what?

“You don’t want noise? Noise is part and the bullets are part of that. Try to deal with them in the right way and achieve what you are looking for.”

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It’s certainly better for Arsenal as a club and for the supporters that the Gunners are in these high-pressure situations.

The only way to win trophies is to stay in contention for them until the end of the season, and Arsenal are currently top of the Premier League, in the last-16 of the Champions League and the FA Cup, and in the final of the League Cup.

That inevitably means some high stress games over the next few months, and Sunday’s north London derby is certainly one of them. But there’s no way to avoid these moments, you just have to rise to the occasion.