Chelsea are preparing to face QPR this afteroon knowing that Arsenal have risen to just four points behind them in the title race after grinding out the three points against lowly Burnley yesterday. Arsene Wenger predicted that it would be a tough match yesterday and so it was, in fact my MOTM, Francis Coquelin, thinks it was our toughest!
Le Coq said on Arsenal.com: “It’s one of the hardest victories and one of the most important as well,”
“There’s been many teams who have dropped points at this place and I’m really happy to get the three points here today.
“We knew they were going to put pressure on us, especially after we scored in the first half. They played quite direct football so it was tough but we coped well with the headers.
“We take it game by game and it’s going really well in 2015. We’ve won loads of games so the confidence is really high. We’ve got the FA Cup semi-final coming up as well, so we just want to carry on that way.”
We can’t do more than win our games and hope Chelsea succumb to the pressure, and Per Mertesacker agrees that we just have to watch Chelsea slip-up if we really want to overtake them at the top. “It’s not in our hands anymore,” the BFG said. “They have a decent lead so it’s very difficult for us at the moment, we’re just focusing on ourselves and that has made us very strong in recent weeks.
“It has been a fantastic journey throughout the whole season but at the moment we are quite sharp and we’re trying to take advantage of that. We want to try to continue that because it makes us stronger and gives us a lot of credit and respect.
“We are on a good run and Chelsea have been absolutely amazing this season, so we’re trying to compete with them at the top. It’s not in our hands anymore but we’re trying to focus on ourselves.
“Great togetherness, great spirit and great cohesion is what makes us strong. Even if we have dropped points this season, we came back even stronger.
“At the moment we can’t learn from defeat because of our great run, we have to learn from victories. There’s a lot to improve but the win at Burnley is just about the result.”
I like the idea of learning from our victories. Let’s hope we learn from Chelsea’s defeat this afternoon and get them under more pressure for when they come to the Emirates…..