Petr Cech has claimed Arsenal have the top two in their sights after climbing up to fifth in the Premier League.

The Gunners ended August with two away defeats but have now gone seven games unbeaten in all competitions to sit six points behind the Manchester clubs.

Arsene Wenger said after the 2-0 win over Brighton: “We have joined the group of leaders – that is important.”

Arsenal have a poor recent record against title rivals and visit City on November 5 before hosting United on December 2.

And the former Chelsea goalkeeper said: “We play them both, so those will be the games where we have the opportunity to close the gap. At this time, we need to make sure we win all our games and let’s see what will happen.

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“On Saturday we were monitoring all the games and the result and every team ahead of us won their games, so we needed to make sure we continued our run and keep winning in order to keep the gap the way it is. Unfortunately we have to be chasing so we need to make sure we win our games and if the teams ahead of us drop some points we can close the gap or get ahead of them.”

Arsenal go into this international break in better fettle than last month after the 4-0 thrashing at Anfield. But Cech admitted Arsenal can still improve after the laboured win after last season's Championship runners-up.

“It was a big disappointment at Liverpool,” he said. “The way we needed to respond was through our work and our results. Since then, we have been doing the work and when you get positive results the confidence of the team is back. We created a lot of shots and a lot of chances but we were wasteful at times and made, for us, a lot of technical mistakes. That is why at times they were in the game, and they defended and made it very difficult for us. But we deserved to win for all the possession but the important thing was to carry on for the 90 minutes and to score.

Cech chats to Rob Holding after the Brighton game (
Image:
Julian Finney)

In a way, as a team we are playing really well at the moment and you can see everybody is doing their job. Obviously, you can always improve. We gave away too many balls during the last 60 minutes when we made some rash decisions. As a team, the cohesion is there. The defensive attitude, the offensive work as well. This is the way to go forward.

“We play better as a team. Certainly we switch better in defence when we lose the ball and you can see it has been working better in recent games, even the big games we were very solid and that plays its part.”