Shutouts can lead Arsenal to the title, says Petr Cech
The 33-year-old secured his 170th Premier League shut-out in Monday’s 2-0 win over Bournemouth, a result which also saw the Gunners move to the top of the table and Cech enter the history books.
He was Arsene Wenger’s only summer acquisition at the Emirates Stadium, signed from rivals Chelsea.
A first goal for the club for Gabriel and a strike from in-form Mesut Ozil wrapped up the points against the Cherries but the clean sheet was also more newsworthy than usual as, in picking up his eighth league clean sheet for his new side, he surpassed David James’ record.
He celebrated as he left the field, punching the air as the record he had eyed for some time was finally his.
“I feel really proud,” he said after the game. I believe that this is the best league in the world and one of the most difficult leagues to play for a goalkeeper, so to have achieved such a record, obviously, it’s a great personal achievement.
“What makes me happy the most, probably, is that these clean sheets so far brought four Premier League trophies, so hopefully we will add clean sheets this season and we will celebrate at the end of the season, because this is far more important.
“Once we got the 2-0 lead and it was going towards the end of the game, then, I have to confess, that I started thinking about the record and in the last 10 minutes, I was checking the clock.”
Cech is the studious type and, when it was falsely claimed he had broken the record some months ago, the Czech Republic international took to Twitter to say that someone had jumped the gun.
How did he know that? He puts it down to his father’s meticulous data-collection.
“I have a kind of a chronicle where I have every game that I’ve played, so you just look through and you can see,” he said. “My father has a book where, ever since I started playing games, he wrote down the games that I played in.
“So, if you go to my website, then you will find it all there and you can set what league, what competition, what year, whatever you want, you will find it there, so it’s easy to track.
“It’s great when somebody gives you the record, but I want to have the record when I know I have really done it in the right way. I always like to do things the right way.”
Cech enjoyed a brief chat with former Arsenal goalkeeper Bob Wilson as he prepared to leave the stadium on Monday night before the 74-year-old told a story about someone he labelled a “special guy”. Wilson watched on as Cech, fresh from the 4-0 hammering at Southampton on St Stephen’s Day which delayed Arsenal’s ascension to the Premier League summit for 48 hours, entered the crowd to hand over his gloves and apologise to supporters along the way.
Having lifted the trophy four times across London at Chelsea, the former Rennes man is a perfect judge of title-winning credentials - and he spots that in his current dressing room.
“I think that the great thing is that we go game by game,” he said, as the Gunners aim for their first league trophy in 11 years.
“Now, we are in a really good position so, hopefully, we can carry on that. Now, going into the New Year, we are in a position where we can actually aim for our targets.”
Cech is to commemorate the occasion by asking his team-mates to sign the shirt he wore in his record-breaking game.
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