Just a few weeks ago, Arsenal fans were praising Petr Cech for saving the Gunners a point with a clean sheet against Stoke City, but last night’s 0-0 against Southampton was a completely different kettle of fish and Cech was his usual efficient self but it wasn’t him that saved the points this time.
It is not down to me,” Petr said after the game. “[It is] especially down to Fraser Forster. He made important saves at important times. In the first half we found them very well organised and they put a lot of effort into defending and closing the spaces. The set up they had was not giving us space but I thought we were battling patiently through that in the second half and we found our way to break them down. Every time we had a great chance you need to put it into the back of the net. In this [sort of game] it is clear that one side is going to [win] by one goal that decides the game. In the second half we probably created the most chances we have created this season at home. Unfortunately we didn’t score and it is two points lost. We need to get them back in the away games.
“You need to look at the end and you need 86/87 points to be sure and it does not matter which way you go to get those points. It does not matter if you have to catch up at the end of the season, which is what we have to do. Every time you lose points you need to keep believing. The boring part is if you play for 0-0 you have no chance. When you create chance after chance on another day you might score six goals and it might be different. We need to get ready for Sunday and get those points back.
“The clean sheet is a positive thing and we dealt well with their threat. They had a lot of set plays and we did really well. We didn’t allow them to score so this is one positive. The second positive is the number of chances we created after a difficult first half [but] we didn’t score and dropped two points. You go on and you need to get points back.
It is good to hear praise from Cech for our opposing keeper’s work, but it a pleasure to see another clean sheet from our newest World-class star. He is doing his job of keeping our opponents out, but it’s a waste of time if our strikers don’t o the job they are paid very well to do….