Just like Arsene Wenger, Petr Cech thought that Arsenal were a match for Chelsea before Mike Dean and Costa decided to ruin the game as a contest by giving Chelsea the numerical advantage.
Cech said after the game: “We played really well in the first half and that sending off changed the situation on the pitch. It’s up to the referee and his officials to make decisions. I can’t comment on it because I didn’t see the incident or what happened after. The important thing is that they had the one-man advantage for the second half and they took advantage of that.
“I would say that a positive thing was that we made it difficult for them when we went down to 10, and then down to nine. We had a few half chances, so we didn’t make it easy for them in the last 15 minutes when we started to push a little bit more. The second red card then came and that was what they needed.”
“I came back and hoped that I could get a result for my new team. We prepared for the game but couldn’t win. My individual highlight will be the reception I got from the fans which was amazing. I would like to thank everybody but obviously I would have liked to win the game. We go home with no points so that’s the disappointing part.”
Just after the opening day defeat to West Ham, Cech spoke about his philosophy of simply concentrating on improving in the next match, and he said the same thing yesterday in his parting shot: “You have to pick yourselves up and continue. That’s the only thing you can do because you don’t win or lose the league after five games. You need to carry on until the last minute of the campaign. Obviously we need to keep going.”
Hopefully we can get some consolation by beating Tottenham on Wednesday….