Arsenal forward Theo Walcott believes the arrival of Petr Cech at the Emirates Stadium has made a huge difference to the Gunners’ title prospects.
The lack of a truly top-class goalkeeper has been cited as one of the reasons why Arsene Wenger’s team have not won the English Premier League since 2003-2004, but the pre-season arrival of Cech from champions and London rivals Chelsea means that is no longer the case and the experienced goalkeeper made several fine saves in a goalless draw at Stoke City at the weekend that took Arsenal back to the top of the table.
“The mental strength in this dressing room’s the strongest it’s ever been,” Walcott said. “When you have the likes of Petr Cech coming in, he just enhances that. He’s a leader. We’ve just got to look at him because he’s obviously been at the top level and won many things. If we all have the belief he’s got, we can push on.”
Photo: Reuters
Arsenal lead surprise contenders Leicester City on goal-difference alone and England international Walcott said the battle to be crowned champions was shaping up as the most exciting in Premier League history.
“You can’t tell what’s going to happen, it’s just so tight. With the amount of teams that could potentially win this league, it’s probably going to be the most exciting Premier League for a neutral ever, I think,” he said. “No one can call it, but we’re top and we can be proud of that at this moment in time.”
There has long been a suspicion that Arsenal can be harried out of their preferred game by teams prepared to take a physical approach, but Walcott, 26, was proud of the resilience his teammates demonstrated at Stoke.
“We felt from the start physically we were up for the fight and the battle,” he said. “It’s an improvement from previous performances here [at Stoke]. We’ve got to be proud of that point.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier