Chelsea goalkeeper Petr Cech is willing to play on with a broken finger after coming through his side's 4-1 win over Wigan without any complications.
The 30-year-old was expected to be missing from Rafa Benitez's starting line-up for a number of weeks after suffering the fracture in the 3-2 loss to Newcastle, but he was allowed to decide for himself whether to face the Latics.
"That I would play [against Wigan] was decided definitely on Friday after the training session," Cech said on his official website.
"I coped normally but felt quite a lot of pain in it. The doctors left the final decision to me. I had a special splinter and bandage for this match. They could not deaden the pain because I need to feel the finger while goalkeeping."
Cech insisted, despite the pain, he is hoping to remain in goal with a trip to former club Sparta Prague in the Europa League on Thursday.
"Naturally, it was painful as it always is if you have something broken," he continued.
"But I could play with it. The important thing is to endure the pain. There were quite a lot of shots but none of them hit me directly in the finger.
"When I survived this, then I will certainly be playing against Sparta on Thursday, unless something unexpected happens by then."
Cech believes the scoreline over Wigan flattered his team after a poor start to proceedings, but he underlined the importance of climbing back above Tottenham into third place.
"Tottenham played before us and won, so we knew we could not afford a slip-up," he continued.
"We are glad to have won and, moreover, when [Manchester] City lost their match later on, it makes the gap between us and them just four points. We did not have the best of starts against Wigan but it was possibly caused by having a lot of players away on international duty and some of them returned at the last moment.
"We got better throughout the match and the first goal helped us a lot. After the half-time break we added another but then we let them pull one back. Fortunately towards the end we scored two more and that was the main difference between this and our previous games - that we converted our opportunities."
