Cech confident Arsenal can deal with injury crisis

REUTERS – Arsenal are in the middle of an injury crisis with seven players currently on the sidelines but goalkeeper Petr Cech has said he was confident the club can pull through this period.

Even without Alexis Sanchez, Santi Cazorla, Francis Coquelin, Mikel Arteta, Jack Wilshere, Tomas Rosicky and Danny Welbeck, the Gunners have won four games on the trot in all competitions.

Arsenal are second in the Premier League table and just two points behind leaders Leicester City, and Cech hopes the injured players can recover quickly to help the Gunners end their 11-year wait for the title.

“We’ve been through the season with plenty of problems. Everything isn’t going as smoothly as we would like it to,” Cech told the BBC.

“We can’t avoid injuries — sometimes you have more, sometimes you have less — but we showed that even with the unlucky injuries at the moment that we manage to win games.

“I believe we will benefit from players coming back into the team, once they are fit.

“The season is long and anything can happen. But if we stay where we are until March or April, then we have the chance to win the league.”

Arsenal travel to take on 12th-placed Southampton in the league on Saturday.

(Reporting by Shravanth Vijayakumar in Bengaluru; editing by Sudipto Ganguly)