Mikel Arteta addresses Aaron Ramsdale's Arsenal mistake as he hails key attribute behind Brentford win

Mikel Arteta was proud of the maturity and character his Arsenal players had to show to get over the line against Brentford at the Emirates Stadium. The Gunners claimed a 2-1 win over Thomas Frank's side with Kai Havertz's late winner being enough to see them move to the Premier League summit with 10 games to go.

Arsenal were made to work for the three points, though, with Brentford, who capitalised on an Aaron Ramsdale error just before the break to cancel out Declan Rice's opener, pushed them all the way. Ultimately, Arsenal demonstrated the quality needed to see off the challenge of the Bees, pick up their eighth league win in a row and put the pressure on Liverpool and Man City, who meet at Anfield on Sunday.

It was a far cry from the swashbuckling, dominant showings Arsenal have turned in of late, with the north London outfit bagging a total of 31 goals in their previous seven outings, including their 6-0 demolition of Sheffield United on Monday night.

Arteta has obviously enjoyed seeing his outfit sweep aside opponents with ease over the last few weeks, but he took just as much enjoyment watching them grind out a result and overcome the challenge of Brentford on Saturday night.

"A special day, a really tough opponent to play," Arteta told Sky Sports. "At 1-0 we had the game under control but conceding the goal made the game more difficult and then you had a beautiful challenge in the second half against a team that wanted to take the game to us. But we insist, we were so determined, really aggressive and we knocked on the door and knocked on the door and we got rewarded."

He added: "You have to win every game with the level you have with Man City and Liverpool at the moment, there is no space for slip ups. We are trying to do our job which is win our games and see what happens.

"In a certain way yes (it is better). We really had to respond to the challenge in the second half and show our maturity with the game we wanted to play. We're emotionally really mature and I'm really pleased with what we've done."

The performance of Ramsdale was one of key talking points from the game, with the aforementioned error coming on his return to the starting line-up after replacing the ineligible David Raya. The England international never let his head drop, though, and he went on to make a number of key saves in the second half to keep Arsenal level in the contest, much to the delight of Arteta.

"Fantastic courage that Aaron has," he said. "That's his personality. Mistakes are part of football and it's how you react to that. He did that in a brilliant way, I'm so happy for him and I'm so happy we won the game."