Mikel Arteta has refused to be drawn on Arsenal’s title hopes after his side suffered a damaging 1-0 defeat at Newcastle United on Saturday.

Alexander Isak’s 12th-minute header settled a hard-fought match at St James’ Park, with Arsenal struggling to beat the hosts and registering just one shot on target.

Arsenal face the prospect of falling eight points behind defending champions Manchester City if they beat Bournemouth later on Saturday and Arteta said: “I understand that, but after eight, nine or 10 games last year we didn’t do that (on the title spoken) and we will not talk about it now.

“It’s about how you respond to that. We’re not going to find the right words or answers to describe how we feel. We have to put it on that pitch on Wednesday evening against Inter Milan (in the Champions League).”

Arteta suggested Newcastle made the match more physical after Isak’s goal and believes his team should have tackled the task better.

“We deserved to lose today,” he said. “I thought we started very well and were very dominant. We didn’t defend the penalty area well enough. Credit to them. They scored a beautiful goal with a good ball.

“Then the game changes and you play a different game. You have to adapt and we didn’t do that well enough. I’m very frustrated.”

“We got sucked into a game where they were constantly looking and we couldn’t play the game we wanted.”