Cech hints that Southampton made it boring

Arsenal goalkeeper Petr Cech has spoken to the media after his side’s 0-0 draw against Southampton at the Emirates Stadium.

It was a frustrating evening for the home side, with the likes of Mesut Ozil, Theo Walcott and Laurent Koscielny missing a number of opportunities to put them ahead.

The good work of Southampton shot stopper Fraser Forster also proved vital, with him making a string of good saves and for only the third time since 2003, Arsenal failed to score a single goal despite having 10+ shots on target.

Twitter: This is the third time since August 2003 that Arsenal have managed 10+ shots on target and failed to score. (@Orbinho)

Cech, who didn’t have too much to do during the 90 minutes, was full of praise for the England international, as reported by Arsenal’s official club website.

It is not down to me, [it is] especially down to Fraser Forster. He made important saves at important times. In the first half, we found them very well organised and they put a lot of effort into defending and closing the spaces. The set up they had was not giving us space but I thought we were battling patiently through that in the second half and we found our way to break them down. Every time we had a great chance you need to put it into the back of the net.

In this [sort of game] it is clear that one side is going to [win] by one goal that decides the game. In the second half, we probably created the most chances we have created this season at home. Unfortunately we didn’t score and it is two points lost. We need to get them back in the away games.

The 33-year-old then claimed that while Arsenal were desperate to win the game on Tuesday evening, their opponents may have played for the single point.

You need to look at the end and you need 86/87 points to be sure and it does not matter which way you go to get those points. It does not matter if you have to catch up at the end of the season, which is what we have to do. Every time you lose points you need to keep believing. The boring part is if you play for 0-0 you have no chance. When you create chance after chance on another day you might score six goals and it might be different. We need to get ready for Sunday and get those points back.

Despite the many negatives, Cech did have a few plus points to take away from the 0-0 draw.

The clean sheet is a positive thing and we dealt well with their threat. They had a lot of set plays and we did really well. We didn’t allow them to score so this is one positive. The second positive is the number of chances we created after a difficult first half [but] we didn’t score and dropped two points. You go on and you need to get points back.