Petr Cech is refusing to rule his side out of the race for the Premier League title, but admits Arsenal must rely on their rivals to drop points.
The Gunners earned only their second away win of the campaign this weekend when beating Burnley, and those three points saw them leapfrog both Liverpool and Tottenham into the top four,
The North-London side are now eyeing a potential title charge, having enjoyed a huge upturn in fortunes of late, and they will be hoping their re-emergence in the top four will see them push on to challenge even higher in the table.
Cech admits that his side are in with a shot at the title if they can manage to build on their recent run of results, but must simply concentrate on their own form and hope their rivals slip up.
“You have to play game by game, not think too much about what’s going on around you because if you win your game then you give yourself a chance,” he said.
“Let’s win our game and see how the others are doing. If the other teams at this moment above us keep going, keep winning, then you can’t catch them, but first you need to win your games and keep putting pressure on them.
“It’s only 13 games in, that’s the most important thing and there’s so many points to be won. You need to carry on for 38 games and show consistency. There can be plenty of twists in the table and you see yourselves climb after two wins then have a draw and fall out of the top four pretty quick. It’s packed in there and I think it will be until the end of the season.”
The win over Burnley would not sound as important had you not been following the Premier League closely, but the Clarets have been a surprise package this term, and had been extremely impressive at home.
“It’s a big win – coming to the game we both had 22 points,” Cech said.
“They’ve been playing particularly well, been very solid at home this season, only conceded two goals and they are well organised and very hard to break down at Turf Moor. We expected a difficult game, which it was, but I thought the second half performance meant we deserved a little bit, even though we had to wait until the last minute to score the winning goal.
“We said that we wanted to carry on with the big win at home against Tottenham and we needed to back it up. Apart from the Everton win away, a good result at Chelsea [draw], we haven’t been getting results away from home. But now we got a big win here and now hopefully we’ve turned the corner in terms of the away games and we need to carry on with our home form and if we can get as many away points as well then we will climb up the table.”
Is it right to consider the weekend’s win over Burnley as a ‘big win’? Is it too early to consider ourselves for the title?
Pat J
The season is still long and there are 25 more games to play, but Arsenal have not shown a lot of improvement in their system after 13 games. I could only be sure about the top four position if Arsenal manage to beat a big team in an away match.
Let’s see what Arsenal have done against other big teams so far:
– Liverpool (away): Lose.
– Chelsea (away): Draw.
– Manchester City (away): Lose.
– Tottenham (home): Win.
I would say this is not bad for a sick team. If Arsenal could win the next six tough Premier League games, I think they are back on track:
– Huddersfield Town (home)
– Manchester United (home)
– Southampton (away)
– West Ham United away)
– Newcastle United (home)
– Liverpool (home)
I agree. If our people could shut up with the boasting or “we can do this or that” and just come in under the radar we may do better. The reason for saying this is that most of our players are not good under pressure and don’t need it added on unnecessarily.
I think 14-16 points from those fixtures will be a good enough to maintain top 4, we would have played all of the other top 8 teams.
We might even find ourselves in 2nd, which I think will be a good place to finish with hopefully Europa and FA cup.
The problem with our fixture list is that we play just about every club about to sack a manager. And we all know what happens when sacking a manager can cause an uplift in form.
I wouldn’t be surprised if every team Arsenal face from after Huddersfield sack their manager before the Arsenal game.
Getting in the excuses a bit early!
Let’s remove the excuses and go for the wins. For me 13 out 18 points would be okay.
Great positive attitude from my Cech and the type of mentality we need in the team. Fans were very negative on almost all aspects of the club, from manager, board and transfer policy, team selection and almost anything under the sun. The manager and the team still believe they are in with a chance. Man city look a cut above the rest but strange things can happen and if we can stay strong at the emearites and pick up point away from home we could still be in the race at the end of the season. We find ourselves up with the leadin pack and the team managed to find 3 points against a very organised burnley team. Seeing a people were talking about the spuds, Chelsea, Liverpool and the 2 Manchester clubs being better than us, surely we can take some hope and believe with the the current league position and the prospect of finishing close to the top spot at the end of the season?
As soon as we (specially wenger) have better position in the premier league we talk about winning the title then with the pressure we sink again.
Ha ha ha… optimism is great but I think we had enough of it in the last 10 years.
We all need to be realistic.
Our midfield (which we all worshiped in the past as an Arsenal tradition) is good enough to play for Stoke! We don’t have a single player who can take the ball and with help of others move it from box to box.
Xaka? He’s pass is bad.
Ramsey? maybe if we go in oposit direction – from their goal to ours.
Coq? No way!
Wilshere? too slow and weak to do that
Elneny? Not mentaly ready to do that.