Petr Cech cut a frustrated figure after we slipped to another defeat on the road on Sunday as we were beaten by Newcastle.
Afterwards he spoke to the media and this is what he said:
on whether we should have had the game won by half-time…
I think that we started well. After going 1-0 up, we were in control. At that point, I thought we’d been doing really well. Unfortunately they managed to score a goal, but in the second half it stayed the same way. We were pretty much in control and we tried to find the openings, the winning goal, but we didn’t create enough in the second half to be dangerous enough. I think the second goal kind of sums up our away season. We collectively made a number of mistakes at the same time which led to their goal, and we devalued our work during the game with a situation like that. I think that it’s happened more frequently than normal over the course of the season, and it’s obviously cost us our position in the league table.
on whether the game started to get away from us once Newcastle equalised…
No. We know that they’re playing to stay in the league and for them, it was a huge game. You can see that they had nothing to lose. Once they were 1-0 down, they stuck to their plan, defended well and then waited for the counter-attack. They used quick balls behind, so we knew they were going to continue like that. The second goal is obviously a big blow for us and it helped them to get a lot of confidence. After that it became very difficult. I would say that it sums up our away form the season.
on whether this game came at the wrong time…
No, I wouldn’t say so. We changed the lineup but we did really well in the first half. Having gone 1-0 up, I thought that we were in control and played some good football. We had some possibilities to score a second goal which we didn’t take or we didn’t find the final pass. They scored a goal which obviously helped them to regain confidence, then they could stick to their plan for the second half. They defended very well, were well organised and tried to counter quickly behind us. We tried to break them down in the second half, which was not happening because we couldn’t create enough in the second half. We were still in control of the game but unfortunately we made a series of errors for the second goal which decided the game. It wasn’t just one mistake, it was a few.
on the reasons behind our disappointing away form…
I don’t think we can [find a reason] because we’ve been battling with it this far and we still haven’t found the answer. We still have games to play and we need to make sure we are ready to finish well.
on how big the challenge is to make sure we’re still in Europe next season…
We have a semi-final of the Europa League to play, and we also have remaining Premier League games which we need to try to win to give ourselves a chance.
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