Petr Cech, a major contributor to over 14 hours of football at Stamford Bridge without a goal conceded, believes the clean sheet against Manchester United is a huge boost for team confidence.

A strong defensive display against Wayne Rooney, Ryan Giggs, Antonio Valencia and co. meant the Chelsea keeper had just two efforts on-target to deal with in the 1-0 victory, which bodes well for the remaining seven months of the league season.

'It is good to keep the clean sheets going because in important games, you know that if you score one goal, you can close the door at the back and it is enough to earn the three points,' Cech stated following the win that put Chelsea five points clear.

'This is good for the confidence of everybody. You have a lot of difficult games in the Premier League and if we don't concede goals, we are always capable of scoring one goal. On Sunday we showed we can keep clean sheets and score against anybody.

'It is always good to open up a gap,' the Czech stopper continued.

'It is obvious this was an important game and it is a big difference if you are two points or five points ahead of your rivals.

'I liked the way both teams played. All through the game you could feel that nobody was happy with a draw, everybody wanted to score the goal. It was a difficult win and there was a long way to go, but definitely it puts us in a good position to go through the next part of the season.'

Cech believes that barring an unexpected loss of form across the top sides, the championship is now a three-horse race between Chelsea, Arsenal and Man United. His own side are motivated by what they see as missed opportunity the campaign before.

'We were disappointed last season because it was a season when Man United didn't play so well as the previous two seasons and the difference was we didn't play up to our standards. If we had played last season as we had consistently played before, I think we would have challenged them much more.'

Next up following the two-week international break is a challenge from the other end of the table as second-from-bottom Wolves visit Stamford Bridge. Our first-choice keeper will be alert to the dangers.

'All teams have a belief in themselves in the beginning of the game and it is just up to us how we show them that we are strong at home. Recently we have been putting a lot of pressure on the teams at Stamford Bridge and we have scored a lot of goals and once we score a goal, we have a lot of quality to kill the games off. That is what we have done at home. In the two games away we lost we didn't do so.'

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