Gunns all fired blanks

CONFIDENT: Cech PETR CECH admits that struggling Arsenal could have played for hours and still not scored against BATE Borisov.

The Gunners slumped to a humiliating 1-0 defeat in Belarus after Stanislav Dragun scored a first-half winner for the minnows, who were playing their first competitive match since December.

Cech admits the display was not good enough but insists his side can turn around the Europa League last-32 tie at the Emirates on Thursday.

The Arsenal keeper said: “It was one of those games where if you play another couple of hours we wouldn’t have scored, but there are games like that in football.

“You try, you play and sometimes you go home with the result you don’t want, but you have to pick yourself up and make sure that you’re ready for the second leg.

Lifting

“That’s the advantage of a two-leg play-off – if one game is bad you can always make up for it.”

Cech, who wants to end his final season as a pro by lifting the trophy for the second time in his career, claims Arsenal only have themselves to blame.

He said: “We want to score goals. We wanted to win and we want to put ourselves in a good position for the second leg, but we’ve made it more difficult for ourselves.

“In the first half we played well and created enough chances to go ahead in the game.

“But unfortunately we didn’t take our chances and we conceded in the last minute of the half, which obviously gives them a lot of confidence and belief.”

Arsenal have now lost four of their last seven games and will be without Alexandre Lacazette, who apologised after being sent off for elbowing Aleksandar Filipovic, for the second leg.