There are quite a few stats going around the football media at the minute and one of them, reported by Metro, is about the Arsenal and Czech Republic international keeper Petr Cech. So I thought it might be time to take an early look at how our only signing of the summer is doing with his new club.
The 33-year old has already made the news a few times since joining for Arsenal, with his two mistakes against West Ham condemning us to a shock defeat on the opening day and then all the furore when Arsene Wenger left him on the bench for the Champions League loss to Olympiacos, so it is nice to see something positive about him.
The stats show that Cech has the highest save percentage in the Premier League and while that does hint that the Arsenal back four might not be protecting him well enough, there are plenty of teams that have allowed more shots on goal.
Arsenal are now tied with Man City, Spurs, Crystal Palace and Watford for least goals conceded and when you consider how we started and also had two players sent off against Chelsea, that suggests to me that as well as being a great keeper, Cech´s influence is starting to spread through the team, especially the defence.
He was brought to the club for his experience and winning mentality as much as his keeping ability and after Arsenal completed one of our best big game results in years by comfortably beating an in form Man United, is that mentality now showing itself in the Arsenal team?
In short, is Petr Cech effect turning his Arsenal team mates into winners?