Arsenal and Petr Cech: Right words, wrong time

Petr Cech has stated that there is not enough ‘pressure’ at Arsenal. His comments are a correct assessment of the culture at the club, but they come at the wrong time.

There has been plenty said about the unhelpful culture of Arsenal football club under the management of Arsene Wenger. A soft underbelly, an absence of leaders in the dressing room, the seeming lack of willingness to challenge and criticise one another in the hope of improving individual and collective performances.

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To summarise the common critiques of how Wenger managed the club’s culture, it was all too nice. Obviously, encouragement is important, necessary even. But it must be balanced with expectation and challenge. Rarely was that the case.

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This week, Petr Cech put it a different way. Speaking with the London Evening Standard, the 37-year-old goalkeeper, who will retire after Wednesday’s Europa League final, said that there is not enough ‘pressure’ at Arsenal, especially in comparison to his ruthlessly successful former club, Chelsea, the Gunners’ very opponents on Wednesday:

"“It will sound strange but I think generally at Arsenal there is not enough pressure. Arsene is a real gentleman. As much as he hates losing, he stays a gentleman. If you lose, you win, you lose, you win, he kind of carries on. That’s something I’ve never experienced before. At Chelsea, at the times when we drew, it felt like a funeral in the dressing room. It was so bad. If we drew against a big team at home, it was like, ‘Oh no, it is impossible we didn’t win at home’. It came from everywhere: the players, the coach. Since the start when I was there, the pressure was there every game.”"

Now, I have very little qualms with what Cech said. In fact, I believe he is absolutely correct in his assessment of the infecting issues that plagued the football in the latter Wenger years. Nevertheless, the timing is off. Very off.

There is a context to say certain things. Criticism, or the very least a frank, analytical assessment of a situation, which this undoubtedly is, should not be done a) in public and b) before the club’s biggest game of the past five years against the very team that you used to play for and are making comparisons with.

I have great respect for Cech. I think he is an excellent player, a wonderful professional, a model footballer. One of the greatest and well-liked in the Premier League era. But this is a major error in judgement, and not in what he said, but how and when he said it.

Surely these kinds of comments can wait until the summer, until after the final, until after retirement. Why say them now? It helps no one and makes very little sense. The words may be right, then, but the context was absolutely not.