Under-fire Cech hits out at German club

Keeper unhappy at criticism after defeat in season opener

Arsenal goalkeeper Petr Cech has hit out at Bayer Leverkusen after the Bundesliga club’s Twitter account mocked his performance in Sunday’s 2-0 defeat by Manchester City.

With new Gunners head coach Unai Emery encouraging his team to play out from the back, Cech looked uncomfortable when trying short passes.

Cech was preferred in goal to summer arrival Bernd Leno, who joined from Leverkusen for a reported £19.2 million.

A video of Cech almost scoring an own goal as he attempted a pass across the face of his own goal started circulating on Twitter with Leverkusen’s English account getting involved.

“We might know a guy...” they replied to one Tweet highlighting Cech’s error, seemingly suggesting their former number one Leno would be more adept at implementing Emery’s vision.

That was followed by a 29-second video of Leno playing out from the back in a game for the German side, with the caption: “In case you were all wondering how to play out from the back...”

Retweeted more than 1,750 times, plenty of supporters of both clubs found the reply humorous, but Cech took to Twitter to post a reply last night, criticising the “professionalism” of the post.

He wrote: “@Arsenal we share important values which make us a big club not only on the football side. Fair competition, professionalism and sportsmanship are the biggest ones you teach young footballers and it’s sad to see when other clubs don’t share the same values. .@bayer04-en ,”

l Tottenham’s home Premier League matches against Liverpool on September 15 and Cardiff on October 6 will be played at Wembley because of “issues with the critical safety systems” at their new stadium, the club have announced.

Picture: PA. Petr Cech: Came in for criticism after some uncomfortable moments in the defeat to Manchester City.