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