Petr Cech says criticism of his performances this season have unfairly focused on a couple of hiccups.
While the 36-year-old admits an error in his distribution at Cardiff was ‘not a great thing to do’, he remains bullish about his ability to implement Unai Emery’s football philosophy.
Ahead of the Gunners trip to Newcastle, a match that Cech is expected to start, the keeper defended his reputation.
“I had 166 passes in the first four games which is a huge amount and everybody picked up on only two,” he told the Evening Standard.
“It’s obviously not a great thing to do when you pass the ball in a dangerous area, like I did at Cardiff when I gave it to Harry Arter but it’s part of the game that you can always make a mistake.”
Given there’s no suggestion that Emery is about to change his tactics, Cech preached patience, pointing out that those teams with a reputation for building play from the back didn’t become experts in the blink of an eye.
“If you look at the evolution of Barcelona and Man City, it didn’t happen overnight. As they got more familiar with that [style], the results came.
“We’re now in that process of getting to know what advantage it gives us.”
After the Cardiff game, Emery declared his support for Cech stating: “Petr has experience, he is intelligent, he is doing it how we want in building up our work on the pitch.
“It is very important for me to continue doing this and improving. If you play long balls every time, you lose your personality and you lose moments on the pitch.
“We take a little risk. When you break this risk, and break through their pressing, you can find the space for attacking position.
“It is clear you can make a mistake, but we need to continue with this personality.”
The one where he sliced it and it just missed the goal was very scary. It’s that which makes you remember it more than all the good ones.
he just feels uncomfortable every time he has the ball with his feet and its making me nervous every time haha.. and Sokratis isnt helping him by aaalways passing the ball back to Cech, sokratis should take more risks, or maybe its the players upfront not moving and creating space for the pass? either way we should try to improve this, I really dont like being nervous when it comes to this passing
I’d rather our defenders didn’t take risks with the ball high into our defensive area
I honestly don’t blame him for the hearth in mouth moments that come up when he has to pass out of the back. You can’t expect a 35 year old to grasp that skill when he hasn’t been asked to do it any time during his career. I blame the manager for trying to force the issue. When pep got to City, he didn’t try to make Joe Heart play out of the back. He went out and got Bravo who could do that. We have a guy that can play from the back sitting on the bench. But what… Read more »
He obviously haven’t heard of Arsenal Twitter. We judge everything
Not just 2 passes bro. Its the increased palpitations and profuse sweating everytime there is a back pass. Just keep it simple and hoof it now and then. For d sake of our cardiacs
I see his point, he hadn’t actually let us down yet.
At the same time if you watch closely a huge number of those passes he’s referring to came straight back to him for him to then repeat, rather than seeing the ball quickly move up the pitch. His defenders aren’t helping with this either but it’s leaving us holding the ball far too long in our third
It’s just so stressful watching him dithering on the ball and looking like a mistake waiting to happen. He must speed up his passes and decision making. If it’s not on just lump it. The opposition are feeding off his dithering and were left needing clean underwear.
I love this narrative of “the process”! “We need to believe in the process!” Surely Unai is watching The 3% on Netflix!!! Unai, Dos, Tres… (Ricky Martin)
Great series
I don’t mind provided he shows he’s got some flair too which is key to composure in the GK passing ability.
Never mind about the saves
One thing about Emery’s language barrier, and his efforts at communicating in English (which is impressively improving every week) is that sometimes he puts things in a way which sounds very novel and creative. Of course, Arsene did this consistently and very much intentionally, as he was a master of the language. But in Emery’s case these instances sound more like accidents, and maybe he wouldn’t be so lucid if he had mastered the language. For example, I really liked how he said long balls make you “lose moments on the pitch”. Which is so brilliantly true. The whole process… Read more »
As regarding this article, what I’m basically saying is, we are indeed playing a dangerous game, i.e our chances of getting intercepted in vulnerable positions also increases. But mistakes such as Xhaka’s and Cech’s are completely avoidable it would seem, and hope they are ironed out with time…especially with Cech, who is not used to passing the ball around, and that’s as much a reflex as it is a skill. I think Cech lacks the former, and hope it will develop with more game time. Till then, as long as we score more goals than them, I’m happy.
Yes his passing has looked dodgy and he makes us nervous. As for a goalies primary duty of saving shots, he’s done well.
What is a pass?
Baby don’t judge me
No More
Clearly beneficial to draw teams high up the pitch and I expect us to continue
the defenders are utterly stupid to pass the ball to him in the first place, putting cech under pressure needlessly, pass the ball forward or sideways, but not back to cech, surely they can do that.
Hmmm, if it were just a couple of passes, he’d have a point. Reality is he looks hopeless with the ball at feet on every pass.
Can he improve? No idea. I don’t think so.