A return to Stamford Bridge saw Petr Čech leave empty handed on Saturday afternoon, but he was happy with the way Arsenal played.

The goalkeeper, who spent 11 years with Chelsea, was naturally disappointed to be on the losing side but thinks his new team did well considering the Gunners had to play with 10 men for more than half the game.

A controversial afternoon saw Mike Dean send off Gabriel but fail to dismiss Diego Costa. Then Santi Cazorla was sent packing for a second bookable offence deep into the second half.

Everything went against the Gunners, but Čech was pleased with the resilience of the team.

“I would say that a positive thing was that we made it difficult for them when we went down to 10, and then down to nine,” the goalkeeper said after the game.

“We had a few half chances, so we didn’t make it easy for them in the last 15 minutes when we started to push a little bit more. The second red card then came and that was what they needed.”

Arsenal had stayed in the game and restricted Chelsea to very few chances despite the disadvantages, only conceding from a set-piece and a huge deflected effort in stoppage time.

The side had managed to even force some pressure on Chelsea shortly before the second red card which, as Čech suggested, more or less finished the game.

A disappointing Saturday afternoon but the goalkeeper is right, we can take positives from the way we played.