Mikel Arteta has said that signing a new striker in January is no guarantee that they will win the Premier League but still left the door open for reinforcements this month.

Arsenal face Brighton on Saturday evening and will welcome back Kai Havertz after the Germany forward missed the win over Brentford due to illness. But with Gabriel Jesus having scored six goals in his last four games in a timely return to form, Arteta rejected suggestions that he needs to bolster his forward line.

“Signing somebody is not enough, that’s for sure,” he said. “Because that signing has to score then how many goals? It has to be a lot of things, sign and then score 20 goals from here to the end and you have a better chance? Maybe yes, I don’t know, but I’m very happy with the players that we have and the amount of goals we’ve scored as well, it’s more than enough to win a Premier League, our numbers as well but the reality is someone is doing more so we have to be better, that’s life.”

Yet asked whether supporters have to be realistic about who they can sign in the midseason transfer window, Arteta added: “That market obviously it’s much more limited than the one in the summer but, I don’t know, people’s expectations and dreams are something good.”

Arteta also admitted that Arsenal must maintain their consistency if they are to overhaul Liverpool in the title race.

“In the last year we have been the best team in the league, broken various records and still haven’t won a major trophy so something is missing. It can be very tiny, small details, you can pick up certain games, certain situations, but at the end we are so close and we just need to flip that coin to the other side to make that happen. It’s only going to happen if we do what we have to do and what we can control, the rest is out of control.”

Arne Slot has been speaking ahead of Liverpool’s home game against Manchester United on Sunday but hasn’t exactly cleared up anything surrounding the future of Trent Alexander-Arnold. The Reds manager says the defender is committed to Liverpool in light of an approach by Real Madrid but hasn’t come out and said the right-back won’t be sold in January. Pick through it here. Slot begins by being asked if all the talk is having a destabilising effect:

“I completely understand the question and why you ask it, but you already know the answer: these conversations I have never shared, not about Trent, not about any others, about what I talk to them about,” said Slot. “It was a conversation as many others we had, me and Trent, so let’s leave it at that. I can tell you he is playing on Sunday and hopefully he brings the same performances as he brought in for the last half-year, because everybody saw how great a first half of the season he had, how much he is here, how much he wants to win here. I see him on the training ground every day working his ass off. He is fully committed to us and he will play on Sunday.

“If it would destabilise players at Liverpool if other people talk about them, then we would really have a problem because if you play at one of the biggest clubs in the world everybody is always – for 12 months long – talking about you, sometimes in relation to other clubs. That happens so many times for our players, so if that destabilises them then we really would have had a problem, not only now but in the last six months because there were some talks about our players in the last six months and I don’t think it destabilised them at all.”

Tom Garry

News from our WSL writer, Tom Garry, on Arsenal.

As the Arsenal squad return to training today after the winter break, Renée Slegers remains in interim charge of the side and is in charge today, just as she was before Christmas. The WSL club’s process to appoint a long-term head coach remains ongoing.

Arsenal are currently third in the WSL, already seven points behind leaders Chelsea after just 10 games.

With Chelsea faltering over Christmas and Manchester City looking too far back and still in semi-crisis, it seems like Arsenal represent the biggest threat to Liverpool in the title race. An impressive 3-1 win at Brentford on New Year’s Day kept the leaders in sight and the Gunners could close the gap to just two points by winning at Brighton on Saturday evening. The snag for Arsenal is that Liverpool will have two games in hand by then and the first of those is at home to ailing Manchester United on Sunday.

Nottingham Forest won’t end the weekend as Liverpool’s nearest challengers in the table as they’re not playing until Monday. But a victory at Wolves could move them second if Arsenal fall to defeat at Brighton.

The top-flight action kicks off with Tottenham v Newcastle at 12.30pm on Saturday, a game surely destined to give the weekend Premier League goal tally a shot in the arm. We’ll have build-up, team news, managers chatting, transfer news and much more as the day goes on. Let’s do this.