Petr Cech has called on his teammates to show the same sort of focus and desire against Leicester City as they managed against Manchester City at Wembley on Sunday.

  • Cech says the players had confidence against City that was missing against Palace
  • Goalkeeper was criticised for Sergio Aguero’s goal
  • Arsenal face Leicester City at the Emirates on Wednesday night

Admitting that the players struggled with their self-belief and confidence against Crystal Palace when they were totally humiliated (again), Cech said that he always felt Arsenal would turn it around against City.

“We need to make sure we win every game,” Cech said, “and that the effort, focus and determination will be the same [as on Sunday], especially the confidence.

“I felt the confidence we started the game with, although we fell behind, you could feel we felt it wasn’t a problem [against City],” Cech said.

“We had 30 minutes and although in a game like Crystal Palace when we fell behind and it suddenly looks like the team isn’t finding the answers to overcome the deficit, you felt today we had the belief. We need to carry that on.

“I think we are going to be under pressure in every game now.

“Because the position we are in in the league now, there’s no other option. We need to keep getting three points in every game to hope we can get the automatic qualification for the Champions League for next season.”

Quite what happened to switch their self-belief back on is not clear but, as I looked at in a podcast (or you can read it here if you don’t want to listen), we will find out on Wednesday night if it was a Wembley one-off or if they really have sorted their crap out.