Arsenal extended their Premier League unbeaten run to 13 with an impressive 5-1 away win over London rivals West Ham in Saturday’s evening kick-off.

Post-match, goalkeeper Petr Čech said the team collectively responded well to pressure from other top clubs at the summit of the league table.

Chelsea’s 3-1 win against Manchester City at the Etihad meant they were six points ahead of the Gunners before kick-off at the London Stadium, but Arsenal responded in emphatic fashion with quick-fire goals late on to propel themselves into second place.

Liverpool travel to Bournemouth in one of Sunday’s fixtures, and Petr revealed the happiness amongst the players that they got the job done in fine fashion away from home.

As quoted by the official website our first-choice goalkeeper said, “It became a kind of must win game for us when Chelsea won and obviously the gap opened to six points. We knew what we had to do and we did it in a very professional way, so we are happy.”

Despite dominating for large periods of the first 45, Arsène Wenger’s side went into the interval with a slender lead intact and gave West Ham a potential opportunity to get themselves back into proceedings.

Continuing Čech remarked, “I know a lot of people would have been a bit anxious, but we showed the maturity not to panic and we kept going. We thoroughly deserved the goals for our performance.”

It’s encouraging to see these quotes from a player of Petr’s calibre and experience, especially given our downfall in recent seasons has been poor game management in matches that we should’ve won comfortably but ended up dropping needless points.

All we can hope for is that in future, Arsenal – especially defensively – remain switched on and focused on the job at hand, not making any silly mistakes which could result in goals conceded.