Thomas Vermaelen has said he still has a future at Arsenal despite his appearance in the 1-0 defeat at Manchester United being the captain's first league start of the campaign.

The defender has slipped behind the preferred pairing of Per Mertesacker and Laurent Koscielny but, with the former unable to play due to illness, Vermaelen was chosen for what was only his sixth appearance of the season. Although his place in the Belgium squad for the World Cup finals in Brazil has been assured by the coach, Marc Wilmots, Vermaelen still wants as much game-time as possible.

"I'm still confident I can play for this club," he said. "I keep reading stories that I want to leave. But that's not the case. I'm still focused on the team. I am always positive. In any case it is not about my situation. It's what the team do and I am really happy that we're top of the league."

Of his late inclusion Vermaelen added: "It wasn't hard. I go into every game ready to play. I always make sure I'm mentally ready and physically ready to play, so it wasn't difficult. I knew it could happen at any moment so I'm always ready. I've been saying it for weeks and months and all of a sudden it happened."

Illness also ruled out Tomas Rosicky but Arsène Wenger, the manager, refused to use it as an excuse for the defeat while the goalkeeper Wojciech Szczesny says that what matters now is how Arsenal respond following the international break, when they resume at home to Southampton.

"It's important for us to get back to winning ways as quickly as we can and make the difference at the top of the table bigger. I thought it was a very even game and it looked like a 0-0 to me. It probably would have been a fair result but they scored a good goal from a set-piece so we'll take that on the chin and try to move on.

"I think we controlled the game in the second half. But they set up to defend more than anything else and we were always going to take control of the game with our passing. I don't think there were a lot of chances in the whole 90 minutes but they took the one they had and that made the difference.

"Of course [we're still in a good position]. The other teams dropped points this week as well but we didn't want to drop three points – we came here for all them and we're disappointed about not getting it."

Bacary Sagna echoed the view. "We wanted to finish [the week] on a good note, we didn't, so it's a bit hard to take. That is football, I think we learn about our team, about football as well," he said. "We need to keep working hard, I need to keep working hard to try to serve the forward players as much as I can. I think I did quite well. Now we're going into the international week and we're going to be ready to start again from the Southampton game.

"The only positive is we kept playing during the second half, we showed them we were a better team but we had to do this all through the game and we started playing too late. But I want to think positive, I want to keep looking forward, I want to think we are first and we want to stay first. The best way to do it is to respond well on the next game."