Petr Cech reflects on frustrating 2-0 loss against Manchester City
|Petr Cech resumed his starting place for Arsenal on Sunday in the opening encounter of the 2018-19 Premier League campaign against Manchester City, a frustrating 2-0 loss for the Gunners, however the veteran stopper believes that despite the defeat the squad has to take the positives from the game’s proceedings.
Arsenal pressed, probed, hassled, but simply couldn’t put a resolute City to the sword. The north-Londoners approached the clash in a calculative manner although a devastating final product failed to materialise, but they certainly asked questions of Pep Guardiola’s men, and that alone against the holding domestic champions is a spiriting indication of what to expect from Unai Emery’s set-up in the weeks to come.
Speaking to NBCSN’s broadcast team after the final whistle, the 35-year-old explained that Arsenal’s revamped philosophy will take time to adapt to, but there’s undoubtedly reason to be optimistic of the club’s expansive system, even if there’s still noticeable teething problems.
“When you play a long ball you don’t always win the second ball,” He said. “We didn’t want them to have the comfort of them always starting with the ball. They are used to pressing really high. They do it really well so at times we put ourselves under pressure but it’s a work in progress. Although we lost today, it’s going to give us a lot of positive thinking for the next game.”
Being Arsene Wenger’s successor, of course, Emery has been introduced to life as a Premier League manager in fairly sobering circumstances, and as Cech played under ‘Le Prof’ for three years, the Czech was also quizzed about life as an Arsenal player with the Spaniard in the technical area.
“Arsene is more about leaving the freedom to the players to decide how they want to do the actions, how they feel in that moment,” he proceeded. “With Unai, we work specifically we want to do and how we want to do it. Obviously we had a big task today to do the same thing we worked on since the beginning of pre-season. I thought we did it pretty well.”