Defender John Terry scored twice in three minutes Saturday to help Chelsea beat Charlton 4-0 and open up a five-point lead at the top of the Premier League.
Damien Duff opening the scoring in the fourth minute, then set up Terry through corner kicks to add two more in the 47th and 50th minutes. Eidur Gudjohnsen added Chelsea's fourth goal in the 59th as Chelsea pulled away from idle Arsenal and Everton.
PHOTO: EPA
"We showed people we could cope with being the leaders and this is now the third or fourth week we have been top of the league and I hope we can be there for a long time," Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho said.
"For me the pressure is not being top. If you are second you have to win your matches but when you are top you just have to think about yourself."
Manchester United moved up two places to fourth but is still nine points behind the Blues despite a 3-0 win over a West Bromwich Albion side coached by former Red Devils star Bryan Robson. Paul Scholes scored in the 53rd and 80th minutes and Ruud van Nistelrooy headed the other in between. It was the first time United had won three straight games this season.
"I think it was our best 90 minutes of the season, the consistency of every player on the pitch," Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson said.
In other results, Norwich followed up its first win of the season with a 1-1 draw at Birmingham and Southampton rallied to a 2-2 draw against Crystal Palace. Also, Portsmouth won 1-0 at Bolton for its first away win of the season just three days after manager Harry Redknapp quit.
Manchester City beat Aston Villa 2-0 off goals from Jon Macken and Shaun Wright-Phillips to record back-to-back Premier League wins for the first time since April 2003.
Villa was uninspiring throughout. Late in the second half, Juan Pablo Angel had a penalty pushed away by Manchester City goalkeeper David James, then headed the rebound over an open goal. Lee Hendrie was sent off in the final minute for aiming a headbutt at Danny Mills which made no contact.
Chelsea has 36 points, followed by Arsenal with 31, Everton with 29 and Manchester United with 27. West Brom dropped to the bottom of the table after Blackburn beat 10-man Fulham 2-0 in the early match for only its second win of the season.
Steve Tosh scored the winner as Aberdeen beat Dundee United 1-0 Saturday to get within six points of Scottish Premier League leader Celtic. Tosh played after spending most of the night at hospital where his wife was in labor with their second child.
"The wife woke me up at three this morning to go to the hospital and the baby came at 10 o'clock this morning," Tosh said. "I've not had much sleep so the manager left it up to me whether I wanted to play and I was running on adrenalin for the whole game."
Celtic has 37 points, Rangers 36 and Aberdeen 31. Hibernian has 27 points in fourth after a 2-1 win over Inverness Caledonian Thistle.
Derek Riordan scored the winner to deny Craig Brewster a point in his first game as Inverness manager. Juanjo gave Caley the lead in the 34th minute, but Guillaume Beuzelin equalized five minutes later before Riordan sealed the win in the 47th.
FC Barcelona increased its lead in the Spanish league to 10 points Saturday after Deco scored the match-winning goal in a 2-1 win over newcomer Getafe.
Rafael Marquez scored the first goal for Barcelona in the 20th minute from a free kick, and Deco added the second three minutes later. Gheorghe ``Gica'' Craioveanu pulled one back for Getafe in the 59th, pouncing on a poor clearance.
Gica was later ejected for a foul on Deco, reducing the modest Madrid-based team to 10 men for the last seven minutes.
Barcelona leads the standings with 32 points, followed by Espanyol with 23, Real Madrid with 22 and Sevilla with 21. Getafe is in 19th place with 13 points.
Espanyol moved into second place by beating Atletico Madrid 2-1 in the late match as Dani Garcia scored both goals to take his season total to four.
Dani first scored from the penalty spot in the 53rd minute, but midfielder Fernando Macedo equalized three minutes later from a direct free kick. Dani then struck the winner after a mix-up in Atletico's defense in the 75th minute.
Real Madrid can reclaim second place when it hosts Levante today.
Mehmet Scholl, enjoying an unexpected comeback at age 34, scored his first home goal in two years Saturday as Bayern Munich beat Mainz 05 4-2 to stretch its winning streak to four matches.
Much to the delight of 49,000 at Munich's Olympic stadium, Bayern put on another explosive show behind Scholl and has collected 15 goals during its winning streak.
"The whole match was fun. I think the spectators were entertained today," Bayern coach Felix Magath said.
The 17-time Bundesliga champions charged to a 3-0 halftime lead before Mainz, entering in seventh place, collected two late consolation goals.
With Scholl, whose injury-ridden career seemed over two years ago, leading the attack, Claudio Pizarro scored in the 14th minute, Scholl in the 35th and Roy Makaay in the 45th. Michael Ballack's header completed the Bayern scoresheet in the 88th.
Bayern, playing as the Bundesliga leader for the first time in 18 months, moved five points clear of idle Schalke and Wolfsburg, which fell victim to Brazilian striker Marcelhino's hat trick in a 3-2 loss to Berlin.
Bayern was accused all season of winning in uninspired fashion. Since Scholl started coming off the bench, the Bavarians have developed an appetite for sparkling combinations behind the midfielder's deft passing skills.
Scholl played the full 90 minutes for the first time since Aug. 14, following a strong performance last week in a 5-1 Champions League rout of Maccabi Tel Aviv. He set up three goals and now is being pushed for a call back to the national team. Scholl has withdrawn from the limelight, after years of being regarded as one of Germany's best players.
FC Kaiserslautern routed Freiburg 3-0, Bochum beat Nuremberg 3-1, Hamburg raced past Moenchengladbach 3-1, Bayer Leverkusen won 2-0 against Rostock and Werder Bremen beat Borussia Dortmund 2-0.
PSV Eindhoven won its 11th straight match in the Dutch league -- all by shutout -- by blanking FC Twente Enschede 2-0 Saturday.
Gerald Sibon scored the first goal in the 15th minute, surprisingly sidefooting a shot past Twente goalkeeper Cees Paauwe.
In the second half, Phillip Cocu glanced in DaMarcus Beasley's free kick. Beasley came on a substitute for Jefferson Farfan, the Peruvian who has kept him on the bench often this season.
The unbeaten league leader has 38 points from 14 matches and has not allowed a goal in 1,020 minutes, more than 11 games. Second-place AZ Alkmaar has 30 points, followed by Feyenoord with 26 and Ajax with 25. Those three teams play today.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
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Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier