Arsenal's Petr Cech confident of last-16 qualification as he urges response against Tottenham

Humiliated: Cech conceded five as Arsenal's Champions League campaign was left hanging by a thread
(David Price/Arsenal FC via Getty Images)
James Olley5 November 2015

Petr Cech insists Arsenal can bounce back from their mauling at Bayern Munich and qualify for the Champions League knockout stages.

The Gunners must win their final two Group F matches and hope Bayern beat Olympiakos to have any chance of progressing after losing 5-1 in the Allianz Arena last night.

Robert Lewandowski, Thomas Muller, David Alaba and Arjen Robben fired the Bundesliga holders into a 4-0 lead before Olivier Giroud scored a fine consolation goal.

Muller added a late fifth, shortly before Olympiakos netted a last-gasp winner against Dinamo Zagreb in Greece to ensure qualification is now no longer in Arsenal’s hands.

Having lost their first game against Olympiakos 3-2 at Emirates Stadium, the Gunners must win the return game by two goals to hold a superior head-to-head record.

And Cech said: “Of course we can still qualify. You win two games and we need to make sure the head to head against Olympiakos is in our favour and then we can go through. Everything is possible and we have two games to play. We have to regroup and continue fighting until the last minute.”

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Arsenal face Tottenham in the Premier League on Sunday and Cech admits his team-mates have no time to wallow in negativity after the club’s worst ever European defeat in Arsene Wenger’s 19-year tenure as manager.

“Every game comes thick and fast and you have to make sure you recover and move onto the next one,” he said. “Obviously this was not a day we wanted but in a way the situation in our group thanks to the result in Greece, hasn’t changed much. We are still in the position where we need to win our last two games and make sure we have a better head to head against Olympiakos.”

And Cech admitted Arsenal will have to improve defensively as Bayern dominated the game throughout and were indebted to their goalkeeper for a string of saves which kept the scoreline from becoming even worse.

“It is tough to take but in a way you have to accept that the team you played against was superior to us in everything they have done, especially in the first half,” he said.

“That’s why the score in the first half was the way it was. In the second half we improved a lot, we gave them more things to think about and we created some chances where if you look at the two games we played against them, we had more chances than in the first one.

“But obviously they were much more efficient in terms of attacking and they created chances, shots and that’s why they managed to score goals. There are some positives in the second half but obviously we need to do better defensively and be more aggressive because we allowed them too much time on the ball.”

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