Per Mertesacker believes Arsenal must improve if they are to challenge for the Premier League title this campaign, but feels they showed character in Sunday's 1-1 draw with Tottenham.
Arsenal were trailing the north London derby 1-0 at half-time following Harry Kane's goal, but Kieran Gibbs eventually helped them to a draw after the break.
Sunday's result saw Arsenal move level on points with Manchester City at the top of the table and Mertesacker is determined to keep improving.
"We want to be involved throughout the season, competing at the top until the last second," the German defender told the official Arsenal website.
"We promised ourselves to do better than last season, not to drop a lot of points too early. It's an interesting position we are in, but we still have room for improvement.
"When you look at the first half we need to manage to play a lot better. We lost our creativity and our way to play a bit, but how we came back shows that we have got a good mentality and level of character in the squad. That's important for the Christmas period coming up.
"It's really important that, even if we suffer sometimes, we can come back. We showed mental strength. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks we'll get more energy because it's important while having injured players."
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