Clean sheet no. 150

„It’s a beautiful number and quite a big one, as well. Every clean sheet counts. I’m hoping to put in more of them, although I’m only going to start counting properly once my career’s over,” said Petr.
The official Premier League statistics tables indicate a mere 148 clean sheets. „The thing is, they only consider those games where I stayed on for the whole 90 minutes whereas Chelsea simply count all in which I participated, no matter if I subbed or not. One of those games was against Everton in 2006 where I was sent off because of a leg injury. The other time was a Blackburn game where Santa Cruz struck my hip and I was totally paralysed. It was sometime around the 60th minute,” explained Petr.
He had come to terms with the draw with Arsenal. „We may have been able to take the lead; Frank Lampard hit the crossbar. If we’d scored the result would probably be a lot different, but a draw’s acceptable in this case. We were playing away and our opponent was world-class. We did make sure we didn’t let Arsenal escape us in the table, though, which certainly is good news,” stated Petr.
The Premier League is “packed”. As of now there is only a two point gap between the first and fifth team. „It looks like it might stay this way for a little longer, actually. None of the top teams seem to be losing points significantly. It will all come down to how we’ll be able to cope with the long series of upcoming games. “
Petr met with national team teammate Tomas Rosicky after the match. „We agreed that 0-0 was okay in this case,” he revealed. He went on to take Tomas’ jersey. Not for himself but for the coach of Chelsea’s goalkeepers Christophe Lollichon. „He collects jerseys for a French charity that supports people suffering from cystic fibrosis. It’s something we used to do back when I was at Rennes. Christoph will take the jerseys there, put them up for auction and donate the profits to the charity. I’d given him my jersey a couple of times already, so I asked Tomas for his this time,” said Petr.