Rice calls for mentality change at Arsenal

Arsenal need to build a stronger in-game mentality, midfielder Declan Rice said after the north London club dropped points in back-to-back matches with a 2-1 defeat against Fulham on Sunday, hurting their Premier League title challenge. Arsenal failed to capitalise on an early lead given by Bukayo Saka at Craven Cottage, slipping to fourth place on 40 points at the halfway stage of the campaign, having lost 2-0 at home against West Ham United on Thursday.While there may be pressure from reigning champions Manchester City and this season’s surprise package Aston Villa’s victories over the weekend, Rice said Arsenal will not hit the panic button. "When you go 1-0 up, you need to take more control and have more self-belief,” Rice said."You need to have more desire, the mentality needs to be better. We need to demand more for each other. In this league, there’s no room to mess up. There’s so many good teams around you and we want to be pushing up the top end of the table. It’s a tough one to take today.”Arsenal are not fixated on the points table, Rice added. Villa moved up to 42 points, the same as Liverpool, who lead on goal difference and were hosting Newcastle United late last night, while City sit third with a game in hand."There’s a lot of media who talk and say ‘Arsenal will win the league this year, Arsenal are better this year’, and whatnot. But we don’t get involved in that, we just try to take every game as we can, one by one,” Rice said. "We’ve been doing really well. There’s been a blip in the road, but there’s no room to panic. There’s still so many games to go, we need to stay positive. It’s not the time to be negative.”Meanwhile, Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta said his team Arsenal cannot afford to repeat the performance that led to loss at Fulham if they want to fight for the Premier League title. Arteta called it their "worst game of the season” after Arsenal failed to capitalise on an early lead and ."Painful and sad day, that’s how I would sum it up... we simply weren’t good enough,” he said. "We could not control the direct play. It was so easy for (Fulham) to win that first, second ball and have opportunity to run, and we conceded (two goals that way). What happened today cannot happen again. Because if you do that you will never have the chance to be where we want to be. It could have been a beautiful way to end the year and finish top of the league, but these are the margins,” Arteta added. The Spaniard said the team needed to focus on improving going forward. "We want to win games,” he said. "We have a chance to be the best in the best in the league with these players. So, they are really good and we are going to continue to work with them.” Arsenal resume their league campaign on Jan. 20 against Crystal Palace.