Cech: Patience a virtue for Gunners

Arsenal goalkeeper Petr Cech believes his side proved that patience is a virtue, after a late own goal by Robert Huth gave them a 1-0 victory over Leicester City on Tuesday night.

Off the back of their win against Manchester City in the semi-finals of the FA Cup, it had looked as if the Gunners’ hopes of qualifying for next season’s Champions League were about to suffer another setback.

They were struggling to break down a resolute Leicester defence at the Emirates Stadium until Huth deflected Hector Bellerin’s wayward effort into his own net in the 87th minute.

Photo by Stuart MacFarlane/Arsenal FC via Getty Images

It means Arsenal are still in touch with the top four ahead of Sunday’s north London derby against Tottenham, where they could also deal a crippling blow to their local rivals’ title hopes.

Cech said: “Sometimes you need to be patient, you need to make sure that you push on for the 90 minutes and we obviously scored a late goal.

“But it was coming, we were getting closer and closer and they were defending well but in the end we found a deflection and I think that we probably felt that [we deserved] a little bit of luck with the deflection because of the way we pushed on.

“We have [played] two games less than Liverpool, so obviously if we win both of them we can catch Liverpool and will be closer to the top four target. We need to get the wins in a row.”