Manchester United kept their noses in front at the top of the English Premiership on Saturday as they won 1-0 at Blackburn Rovers.
Earlier in the day Chelsea had joined them at the top after a 4-0 thrashing of Watford, with Didier Drogba scoring a hat-trick, but United then regained their three-point lead thanks to Louis Saha's 64th-minute goal at Ewood Park.
Watford kept it tight for almost half an hour at Stamford Bridge before the Ivory Coast striker opened the scoring and then made it 2-0 with his second seven minutes before the break. Andriy Shevchenko made it 3-0 (52) and Drogba completed his hat-trick on 68 minutes.
The result moved Chelsea on to 28 points and also made Jose Mourinho's side only the second British club ever to reach 50 successive home games without defeat in the top flight.
Mourinho was quick to praise Drogba after the striker took his goal tally for the season to 14.
"There is an improvement in his game in every aspect," Mourinho said. "He is very strong and he looks very sharp."
"He is great in the air and very strong in defensive actions. He is at the top of his game. Now it is just a question of him staying there for a long time. At the moment I don't think there is anybody better in the world scoring or playing like him," he said.
"He is scoring in every competition -- the Premiership, the Champions League, the Carling Cup. He is playing amazing stuff. His improvement has been at every level. I don't like to use the word unstoppable but he is great in every aspect of his game. He attacks the ball, he dominates in the air, he holds the ball well, he is at the top of his game. I never saw a better Drogba than now," Mourinho said.
Everton were beaten 1-0 at home by Aston Villa thanks to Chris Sutton's first goal for his new club as Martin O'Neill's side moved above Bolton Wanderers into third.
Bolton let slip a two-goal lead to draw 2-2 at Sheffield United while Portsmouth came from a goal down to draw 1-1 with Fulham.
Villa manager O'Neill said Sutton had enjoyed a superb match.
"He was fantastic, he is a really astute center forward and he can only get better," he said.
"It is fair to say that during the summer he was in two minds over whether he was going to carry on," O'Neill said. "He needed a groin operation in the summer and he had not been right last season out on loan to Birmingham."
"He probably tried to play when he shouldn't have, and he was no doubt feeling that it may have been all over. But eventually he probably convinced himself there was something else to give," the Villa manager said.
Wigan Athletic continue to impress with a 3-2 victory over Charlton Athletic, dropping Iain Dowie's side to the foot of the table after Newcastle United drew 0-0 at Manchester City.
And substitute Massimo Maccarone scored the only goal of the game on 75 minutes as Middlesbrough beat West Ham United 1-0.
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
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
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