Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta says his players should “be part of a different club” if they cannot deal with the “noise” as his team bid to end their 22-year wait for a league title.
The Gunners are two points clear at the top of the league as they try to win their first title since Arsene Wenger’s ‘Invincibles’ did so in 2003-04.
But they have just two wins from their last seven Premier League games and Manchester City closed the gap at the top from five to two points ahead of Arsenal‘s game away to 16th-placed Tottenham on Sunday (16:30 GMT).
They have come in for criticism after squandering a 2-0 lead against bottom side Wolves on Wednesday, conceding a 94th-minute equaliser.
It led to accusations of Arsenal being ‘bottlers’, a word Arteta says is “not part of my vocabulary”.
His side have finished second in the last three campaigns, twice to City and last season to Liverpool.
Ahead of the North London derby, when asked how to stop the external noise overwhelming his side, Arteta said: “You ask them the question: do you want to be part of the noise? Or not?
“If not, go and do something else, be part of a different club.
“And everybody has been demanding for 10 years, 15 years that we need to go back there [fighting for the title] and now we are there. And now what? You don’t want noise?
“Noise is part of it and the bullets are part of that and we try to deal with it in the right way and achieve what we are looking for.”
