Petr Cech believes Arsenal can still contend for the title, with the goalkeeper saying the win at Burnley on Sunday can be pivotal to their season.
Alexis Sánchez’s 92nd-minute penalty gave Arsène Wenger’s team a victory that lifted them into fourth place on 25 points, one ahead of Tottenham Hotspur. They are 12 points behind the leaders, Manchester City, yet Cech has not ruled out Arsenal competing for the championship.
“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 victory against Sean Dyche’s side followed the convincing 2-0 win over Tottenham at the Emirates Stadium in their previous league game. Wenger’s team can draw criticism for not always performing away from home and Cech pointed to how the display against Burnley could be vital.
In the first half Dyche’s players dominated yet after the interval Arsenal proved their character by pinning Burnley back and taking the points.
“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.”