Arsenal can still win the Premier League, says Aaron Ramsey
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Version 0 of 1. Aaron Ramsey believes Arsenal still have a chance of winning the Premier League following Sunday’s 2-0 win over Manchester City despite Arsène Wenger’s team being 13 points behind Chelsea. The victory over the champions, thanks to goals from Santi Cazorla and Olivier Giroud, was Arsenal’s first in the league at the Etihad Stadium since October 2010. It also broke a three-and-a-half-year sequence of failing to defeat either City, Manchester United or Chelsea away from home. Ramsey believes that given the nature of this particular season, Arsenal could yet force their way into the title race. “We have to take every game as it comes,” said the Welshman. “There is still a long way to go in this league. Many teams are taking points off each other. We will just have to concentrate on our own game and hopefully go on a big run and see where that takes us at the end. We have got a lot to play for this year so hopefully now we can build on this performance and that will give us even more confidence going into the business end of the season.” Related: Francis Coquelin’s Arsenal masterclass: tactical triumph or just lucky? Ramsey stated that the manner in which City were dispatched, with Arsenal being more compact and resilient set the benchmark for future performances. “We have had a couple of clean sheets and hopefully we can build on that,” he said – Arsenal defeated Stoke City 3-0 in the previous league match, and Hull City 2-0 in the FA Cup. “If we do keep clean sheets we know we are going to have a great chance of taking all three points. Hopefully we can keep building on this. We have an FA Cup game [at Brighton and Hove Albion on Sunday] now which is important. We want to retain that so it is important to get mentally prepared for that before the league starts again. “I thought it was a very complete performance from us. We defended really well as a team, were really hard to break down and we kept forcing them out wide instead of the positions that David Silva and players like that like to take up in behind the midfield and we eliminated that threat. We have always been confident coming into these games but we have been a bit too open in the past and we have paid the price for that. We defended really well. We kept our team shape tight defensively and we took our chances when we needed to. Related: Manchester City 0-2 Arsenal | Premier League match report “We have shown what we are capable of doing. We are going to have chances in games. We are a team that can always create opportunities to score so the important thing is to defend as a team and stop them from scoring because we are always going to get opportunities to score. So if we can keep a clean sheet like we did, we are always going to have a chance to win.” Arsenal are now fifth, only a point behind Manchester United. As every other team in the Champions League positions won at the weekend the victory over City was even more important. “The pressure was on us,” Ramsey said. “Manchester City have made this place a fortress over the years. Not many teams come away with three points so we are delighted with the way we went about it and we are happy we closed the gap.” |