Arsene Wenger got in a push, but Jose Mourinho landed the bigger blow.
Chelsea consolidated their lead in the Premier League by beating London rival Arsenal 2-0 on Sunday in a feisty encounter that may be best remembered for Wenger losing his normal cool and giving Mourinho a shove in the chest on the sideline.
Former Arsenal captain Cesc Fabregas set up the second goal for Diego Costa in the 78th minute to make sure Chelsea remained five points clear of defending champions Manchester City atop the standings. Arsenal are now nine points behind in eighth place, having failed to avenge a 6-0 drubbing at Stamford Bridge last season.
Both Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur climbed above Arsenal with wins.
United beat Everton 2-1 to climb to fourth after goalkeeper David de Gea saved a penalty and made two crucial stops to deny the visitors a late equalizer at Old Trafford. Tottenham are sixth after Christian Eriksen scored in the 40th minute to secure a 1-0 win over Southampton.
Also on Sunday, Queens Park Rangers dropped to the bottom of the standings after losing 2-0 to West Ham United.
The Chelsea-Arsenal game was always going to be emotional given Wenger’s humiliation at Stamford Bridge in his 1,000th game in charge last season, along with Fabregas facing his former team. It even turned physical in the dugout after a hard foul on Alexis Sanchez, with an angry Wenger squaring up against Mourinho and then giving the Portuguese manager a shove in the chest before being separated by the fourth official.
Both coaches downplayed the incident after the game, after Mourinho’s side once again had the better of Wenger’s on the pitch.
Wenger described the push as just “a little one” and said: “What is to regret after that?”
Mourinho said everyone should “forget” the incident.
“To be fair, I do so many wrong things in football,” Mourinho said. “But not this time, because this time, I was just in my technical area and it was not my problem. Game over. Story over.”
Arsenal’s title push may not be quite over yet, but a nine-point gap is looking rather large even this early in the season given Chelsea’s strong form.
Eden Hazard weaved inbetween defenders in the 27th minute before being tripped by Laurent Koscielny in the area, and then converted the ensuing penalty himself to put Chelsea ahead. With Arsenal pushing for an equalizer, Fabregas picked the defense apart in the 78th with a pinpoint long ball up to Costa, who lobbed the ball into the net with one touch.
Mauricio Pochettino got the better of his Southampton successor Ronald Koeman as Tottenham ended their four-match wait for a Premier League win.
Eriksen scored with a 20-yard strike in the 40th minute to deny Koeman’s side a seventh straight win in all competitions.
Pochettino took on his former club for the first time since ending a successful 18-month stint at St Mary’s to lead Spurs.
At Upton Park, Nedum Onuoha’s own-goal gave the Hammers an early lead against QPR before Diafra Sakho headed home a second shortly before the hour mark.
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