Fabregas: Time to step up

Injured Arsenal captain Cesc Fabregas has challenged his team-mates to seize the opportunity to keep their Barclays Premier League title challenge alive with victory at relegation-battling Hull tonight.

The Gunners head to the KC Stadium without their influential midfielder, who has been hampered by a hamstring problem and did not feature in the 5-0 midweek Champions League victory over Porto.

Since successive defeats to Manchester United and Chelsea, Arsene Wenger’s men have put together a run of four straight league victories to haul themselves right back into the title race, and indeed could even go top should Chelsea fail to beat West Ham.

There is, though, now little margin for further error over the final nine games of the campaign, with just two points separating the top three sides.

Fabregas declared: “We have never talked (about the title), we just kept going and going – but now even more it is the time to be doing our talking on the pitch because we have a great opportunity.”