London ¨C Arsenal midfielder Declan Rice said his side cannot be distracted by talk of Manchester City closing in at the top of the Premier League after the Gunners were held 1-1 at Brentford on Thursday.

City is now just four points behind Mikel Arteta¡¯s men and will have homefield advantage when the sides meet in April.

Arsenal is aiming to end a 22-year wait to win the title and appeared to be cruising toward success when it moved nine points clear on Saturday.

However, City¡¯s late fightback to snatch a 2-1 victory at Liverpool on Sunday could prove to be a turning point in the title race.

Pep Guardiola¡¯s men maintained their momentum by beating Fulham 3-0 in midweek, and Arsenal failed to respond.

Noni Madueke gave the visitors the lead in west London, but Brentford hit back through Keane Lewis-Potter and was unfortunate not to claim all three points in the final 20 minutes.

¡°This is a roller coaster of a season,¡± Rice said. ¡°You can¡¯t be naive to think this is going to be easy.

¡°We are playing against the best teams week in, week out. We have to keep pushing and believing in ourselves, controlling the controllable.

¡°We 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.

¡°I¡¯m 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¡¯s a point gained in our journey, but we wanted to win the game.¡±

Arteta was frustrated at how his side let control of the game get away from it after a positive start to the second half.

¡°We lacked composure to maintain the ball better, to play in the right areas. We started to give a lot of unnecessary free kicks away,¡± said Arteta.

Arsenal¡¯s strength from set pieces has played a huge role in putting it into pole position for the title.

But it struggled to cope with Brentford¡¯s own prowess from dead balls.

The equalizer arrived from one of Michael Kayode¡¯s long throws, propelled into the box, that Sepp van den Berg flicked on for Lewis Potter to head in.

¡°They are really good at it, so credit to them as well,¡± Arteta said.

¡°They drag you into a game where it¡¯s like a casino. Anything can happen and something really bad can happen!¡±