EXCLUSIVE

It was on the practice pitches of Rennes nearly 14 years ago where Petr Cech discovered the man who would help transform his career.

He had arrived in 2002 as a fresh-faced, spiky-haired 20-year-old ­goalkeeper from Sparta Prague, where he had set a Czech league record of not conceding a goal for 903 minutes.

It would be just the first milestone in a glittering career but things did not progress readily for Cech at Rennes. They avoided relegation in his only full season at the club courtesy of victory on the final day of the season.

Cech had a trial at Chelsea that summer and joined the Blues for £7million in 2004 but an important bond was formed with French coach Christophe Lollichon during those 18 months in Brittany that has endured to this day.

The goalkeeper recently broke the Premier League clean-sheet record and has become an integral part of ­Arsenal’s title challenge as he delivers on Chelsea defender John Terry’s prediction that his former team-mate could be worth “12-15 points a season”.

That early progress under Lollichon was all the more remarkable because the Frenchman was initially working with Rennes’ youth teams in an academy only founded in 2000 but it did not take long for his methods to catch Cech’s eye.

“When he was working at the academy in France and I had a goalkeeping coach already, I looked at his complex training and thought, ‘wow, this is very interesting’,” Cech told Standard Sport. “This is why in the end he got the chance to work for the first team for the second year I was in France. Then you realise how many different things you can do. Fourteen years back, he did things he is doing now in a slightly different way as well but there is a constant research of new things, seeing how you can get further, even in terms of technique.

“There are so many different ways you can catch a ball in different situations so you try to find the best way to get faster on the floor and to be more agile. This is how I started. I had certain things I was doing and then he said, ‘well, why don’t you try this because I think you will reach further?’

“I didn’t think it would be possible but then I started doing it and I realised he was right. I could reach further. This is something we started off and then when you go and feel that’s interesting, we look at the position of the goalkeeper in terms of the defence — how high you go and all these situations.

“There are a lot of things you don’t see as a player but I was forced to think about it. There were so many things I could improve in my game. That’s why I was doing it. The similarity of the philosophy is what makes our work successful. If you don’t believe the way things are working then you won’t have much success but I really believed in the way it was improving every year.”

"Christophe is always searching for new things to be more efficient, even at the highest level" Petr Cech

Lollichon never played at the top level and retired as an amateur at the age of just 24 to become a coach with Ancenis, who are based near Nantes. From there, he moved to Rennes where he developed goalkeepers including Michael Landreau and Andreas Isaksson but it is Cech who has gone on to excel the most.

Cech recommended Lollichon to the Chelsea hierarchy in the wake of Jose Mourinho’s first departure as Blues manager in September 2007 and by November, he had moved to London and begun helping the Czech Republic international become one of the game’s greats.

Four Premier League titles, one Champions League, one Europa League, four FA Cups and three League Cups preceded that League record of 170 clean sheets, which came in just 352 games — previous holder David James amassed his 169 from 572. Cech’s ambition for further success took him to Arsenal but it was at Chelsea where he established himself among the elite thanks in part to Lollichon’s innovative techniques.

“If you’re a professional goalkeeper for 20 years and somebody keeps shooting the ball at you, after a while, just catching it from 15 yards will not make you progress,” said Cech. “You don’t go any further than just catching the ball from that distance. So you have to find a way of making that exercise more complicated so you know your brain will switch on and go further than this.

“This is the way he works. We try to catch different shape balls, bigger balls or smaller ones because then you need to adapt your hand-eye coordination every time. Suddenly your brain starts working again. You can use colours. Imagine you saving the ball but at the same time a card is held up. You save the ball and shout the colour — you are concentrating on more things. That makes your peripheral vision better as well. Your brain is working much more than just with a simple catch.

“He is always searching for new things to bring it further, to be more efficient and try to make things happen for a goalkeeper to progress even at the highest level. I keep using a table tennis robot which shoots ping-pong balls out. You have to catch it with one hand so it gives you a completely different hand-eye coordination. Then, when you have both hands facing one football, everything becomes easier.

Arsenal vs Newcastle - player ratings 12 show all Arsenal vs Newcastle - player ratings 1/12 Petr Cech: 8 Had to be at his best in this game as he made several crucial blocks from an on-top Newcastle, including a fine double block from Mitrovic and Colback. The save from Wijnaldum was even more crucial, helping Arsenal to the sort of win title triumphs are made of 2015 Getty Images 2/12 Hector Bellerin: 6 In the opening ten minutes he seemed certain to provide at least one goal for Arsenal. But as the match wore on his crossing became more and more inaccurate so that, whilst his ability to get forward was impressive, you couldn’t help but wish he could find Giroud’s head. 2015 Getty Images 3/12 Per Mertesacker: 5 As easy as he was in possession he was guilty of dallying on the ball rather than kicking off Arsenal’s attacks with purpose. It allowed Newcastle to get their ten men behind the ball and made life too hard for his team-mates. 4/12 Laurent Koscielny: 7 Caught well out of position when Georginio Wijnaldum should have been scored. It was part of a disappointing display from the French centre-half, who struggled with runs from deep from Newcastle’s attackers. Credit must go to him though, for a poacher’s finish to give Arsenal the lead and he made several crucial clearances as Arsenal held on late on. 5/12 Nacho Monreal: 6 Time and time again Sissoko and Janmaat had the beating of the Spaniard, who had next to no protection from Walcott in front of him. His crossing, though, was excellent and should have been converted. 6/12 Aaron Ramsey: 5 Careless in defence, indifferent in attack. This was everything that convinced Wenger that Ramsey was not well suited to a central role as his passing was far too loose. 7/12 Mathieu Flamini: 5 A non-entity in front of the Arsenal defence. With Wijnaldum floating around dangerously the Arsenal man should have been on his tail, but time and time again he was out of position. 8/12 Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain: 4 One of the most infuriating players on the pitch, there were moments when Newcastle could not lay a finger on him as he drove from deep. But just as often he would run into traffic, pass loosely or miscontrol the ball. 9/12 Mesut Ozil: 6 By his own exceptional recent standards this was a rather poor game from Ozil, though he was still by some distance Arsenal’s best attacking player. His set-piece delivery was consistently tough to defend as once more his side found most joy from dead balls. 10/12 Theo Walcott: 5 He may have a licence to remain on the edges of the game, waiting to make a critical touch, but when he doesn’t have that it does appear a waste putting him in the side. Unlike Alexis Sanchez he doesn’t track back and unlike Sanchez he is not reliable enough going forward. 11/12 Olivier Giroud: 6 Got into the right positions and could hardly be blamed that his team-mates crafted so few opportunities for him for so much of the game. He remained a menace in the air though, and did well to assist Koscielny for the opener. 12/12 Joel Campbell: 6 Full of running over his 20 minute cameo, he caused Newcastle plenty of problems on the break as they forced men forward, crafting an excellent chance for Ramsey late on. 1/12 Petr Cech: 8 Had to be at his best in this game as he made several crucial blocks from an on-top Newcastle, including a fine double block from Mitrovic and Colback. The save from Wijnaldum was even more crucial, helping Arsenal to the sort of win title triumphs are made of 2015 Getty Images 2/12 Hector Bellerin: 6 In the opening ten minutes he seemed certain to provide at least one goal for Arsenal. But as the match wore on his crossing became more and more inaccurate so that, whilst his ability to get forward was impressive, you couldn’t help but wish he could find Giroud’s head. 2015 Getty Images 3/12 Per Mertesacker: 5 As easy as he was in possession he was guilty of dallying on the ball rather than kicking off Arsenal’s attacks with purpose. It allowed Newcastle to get their ten men behind the ball and made life too hard for his team-mates. 4/12 Laurent Koscielny: 7 Caught well out of position when Georginio Wijnaldum should have been scored. It was part of a disappointing display from the French centre-half, who struggled with runs from deep from Newcastle’s attackers. Credit must go to him though, for a poacher’s finish to give Arsenal the lead and he made several crucial clearances as Arsenal held on late on. 5/12 Nacho Monreal: 6 Time and time again Sissoko and Janmaat had the beating of the Spaniard, who had next to no protection from Walcott in front of him. His crossing, though, was excellent and should have been converted. 6/12 Aaron Ramsey: 5 Careless in defence, indifferent in attack. This was everything that convinced Wenger that Ramsey was not well suited to a central role as his passing was far too loose. 7/12 Mathieu Flamini: 5 A non-entity in front of the Arsenal defence. With Wijnaldum floating around dangerously the Arsenal man should have been on his tail, but time and time again he was out of position. 8/12 Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain: 4 One of the most infuriating players on the pitch, there were moments when Newcastle could not lay a finger on him as he drove from deep. But just as often he would run into traffic, pass loosely or miscontrol the ball. 9/12 Mesut Ozil: 6 By his own exceptional recent standards this was a rather poor game from Ozil, though he was still by some distance Arsenal’s best attacking player. His set-piece delivery was consistently tough to defend as once more his side found most joy from dead balls. 10/12 Theo Walcott: 5 He may have a licence to remain on the edges of the game, waiting to make a critical touch, but when he doesn’t have that it does appear a waste putting him in the side. Unlike Alexis Sanchez he doesn’t track back and unlike Sanchez he is not reliable enough going forward. 11/12 Olivier Giroud: 6 Got into the right positions and could hardly be blamed that his team-mates crafted so few opportunities for him for so much of the game. He remained a menace in the air though, and did well to assist Koscielny for the opener. 12/12 Joel Campbell: 6 Full of running over his 20 minute cameo, he caused Newcastle plenty of problems on the break as they forced men forward, crafting an excellent chance for Ramsey late on.

“You need to have as well an understanding because for example if he comes to a goalkeeper with a tennis ball during a training session, then if you don’t have the understanding of why you do that, then it could be a problem. If you don’t have just a simple ball to catch, it can be really challenging. But I liked the way we tried to find a way forward. He’d say to me, ‘the quarterbacks are doing this, rugby guys are doing that’ so we could try something. We used to play peteca, which is a Brazilian game played with a shuttlecock that has a rubber bottom. You hit it with your palm and you play a game like tennis but we did it by using the crossbar as a net. We used both hands and played a little tournament for the warm-up — you dive, you jump, you use your whole body and hand-eye coordination. You realise how much weaker your left can be compared to your right if you are right-handed. He is not afraid to look for things like that.”

There was speculation that Lollichon could join Cech at London Colney but he stayed at Chelsea as Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger kept faith with goalkeeping coach Gerry Payton.

“At this level, it is a constant battle of getting something extra,” said Cech. “Because after all those years, sometimes you hear, ‘oh I have a top player, what do you want me to teach him?’ But you can learn every day until you are 80.”

Another Lollichon edict, perhaps.