Petr Cech believes Chelsea's 2-0 victory over Arsenal at Stamford Bridge has ruled Arsene Wenger's men out of the Premier League title race
A brace from Didier Drogba sealed three points for the Blues and put Carlo Ancelotti's men nine points clear of the third-placed Gunners.
Cech was able to celebrate his 200th appearance with a landmark cleansheet and is confident Chelsea can wrestle the title from Manchester United.
He told his official website: "It could not have ended better. We claimed such a vital win, I helped the team with a number of saves and, on top of that, it was my 100th league cleansheet.
"I think we have cut off Arsenal by this win and they will find it only very difficult to erase the nine-point gap at this stage of season, especially with the tough games they are going to play yet."
Cech thinks that keeping ahead of United was important, after Sir Alex Ferguson's men racked up an impressive 5-0 victory against crisis-club Portsmouth to top the table on Saturday.
"The win is important because we have managed to respond to United's win.
"We knew that if we had drawn with Arsenal, then they would have stayed infront of us on goal difference.
"That makes our win even more valuable as we have managed to cope with the pressure."
"For the rest of the season the decisive thing will be the consistency of results. The team which will drop least points on the way will win the league."
Cech's views were echoed by team-mate Michael Ballack, who claims that the Gunners are tactically naive in matches against their title rivals.
He told the London Evening Standard: "We wanted to do our job. We knew the way Arsenal play. We could see it in our first game against them and against United - it is always the same style.
"If you play tactics like we did, you can beat them.
"Football is about winning games and that is what United showed when they played them and that is what we did.
"This season and the season before they showed they weren't able to win the league."
