Sign up now ><\/a><\/p>\nPep Guardiola\u2019s men maintained their momentum by beating Fulham 3-0 in midweek and Arsenal failed to respond. <\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a rollercoaster of a season. You can\u2019t be naive to think this is going to be easy,\u201d said England international Rice.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are playing against the best teams week in, week out. We have to keep pushing and believing in ourselves, controlling the controllable. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe 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. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m 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\u2019s a point gained in our journey, but we wanted to win the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Arsenal’s Gabriel Martinelli has a shot saved by Brentford goalkeeper Caoimhin Kelleher. Adam Davy\/PA via APSource: AP<\/p>\n
Arteta was frustrated at how his side let control of the game get away from them after a positive start to the second half. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe lacked composure to maintain the ball better, to play in the right areas. We started to give a lot of unnecessary free-kicks away,\u201d said Arteta. <\/p>\n
Arsenal\u2019s strength from set-pieces has played a huge role in putting them into pole position for the title. <\/p>\n
But they struggled to cope with Brentford\u2019s own prowess from dead balls. The equaliser arrived from one of Michael Kayode\u2019s long-throws, propelled into the box, that Sepp van den Berg flicked on for Lewis Potter to head in. <\/p>\n
Late in the contest, Arsenal\u2019s Gabriel Martinelli was denied by goalkeeper Kelleher in stoppage time, a late miss that proved a decisive moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are really good at it, so credit to them as well,\u201d Arteta said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey drag you into a game where it\u2019s like a casino.Anything can happen and something really bad can happen!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arsenal midfielder Declan Rice said his side cannot be distracted by talk of Manchester City closing in at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":476307,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-476306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/476307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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