Chelsea’s Loic Remy (C) shoots and scores past Manchester City goalkeeper Joe Hart during their English Premier League match at Stamford Bridge in London yesterday.

 

AFP/London


Spanish midfielder David Silva equalised as Manchester City prevented Chelsea pulling eight points clear at the Premier League summit in a hard-fought 1-1 draw at Stamford Bridge yesterday.
Loic Remy put Chelsea in front in the 41st minute, but Silva touched in a shot from Sergio Aguero four minutes later to keep the defending champions five points behind Jose Mourinho’s side with 15 matches remaining.
Manuel Pellegrini’s City have won only one of their last five league games, but following successive defeats by Arsenal and Middlesbrough, they at least prevented Chelsea from streaking away into the distance.
Chelsea great Frank Lampard, sent on by City as a late substitute, was afforded a warm reception on what was likely to prove his final appearance at Stamford Bridge, and it was a broadly positive afternoon for the hosts.
Earlier Daniel Sturridge put nearly five months of injury frustration behind him by coming off the bench to score in Liverpool’s 2-0 win at home to West Ham.
The 25-year-old striker had been sidelined with thigh and calf injuries since September, with his inital fitness problems coming while on England duty.
Raheem Sterling broke the deadlock in the 51st minute at Anfield before Sturridge, a 67th minute replacement for Lazar Markovic, marked just his fourth Liverpool appearance of the season by scoring 10 minutes from time as the Reds bounced back from their League Cup semi-final loss to Chelsea.
“It’s a team game and I am happy the team won,” Sturridge told the BBC. “It’s just good to be back.”
Manchester United climbed into third place with a 3-1 win over basement club Leicester at Old Trafford.
The Foxes produced one of the upsets of the season in coming from 3-1 down to beat United 5-3 when the teams last met in September.
But there was no danger of a similar revival in the return fixture as Louis van Gaal’s men went 3-0 up before half-time through goals from Robin van Persie, Radamel Falcao and an own-goal by Wes Morgan.
Marcin Wasilewski pulled a goal back for Leicester 10 minutes from time.
Tottenham Hotspur completed a fine week with a 3-0 win away to West Bromwich Albion where Harry Kane scored twice to take his tally for the season to an impressive 20 goals.
Christian Eriksen scored his third goal in two matches to give Mauricio Pochettino’s men the lead at the Hawthorns.
Eriksen, who scored twice in the midweek League Cup semi-final draw at Sheffield United that gave Spurs a 3-2 aggregate victory, has become renowned as a late-goal specialist.
Crystal Palace saw a run of four successive wins in all competitions since manager Alan Pardew arrived from Newcastle end with a 1-0 home loss to Everton.
Second-from-bottom Queens Park Rangers’ dreadful away record continued as they suffered a 3-1 defeat to former manager Mark Hughes’s Stoke City.
Stoke forward Jonathan Walters scored his first top-flight hat-trick as QPR suffered an 11th straight league defeat on the road.
QPR’s run of 10 successive away defeats was already a Premier League record and they fell behind in the 21st minute at the Britannia Stadium when Walters capitalised on some poor defending.   
Yesterday’s early kick-off saw John Carver enjoy his first win as Newcastle boss after a 3-0 success away to Hull ended a run of four games without a victory since Pardew’s exit.
Remy Cabella put Newcastle ahead five minutes before half-time with his first goal for the Magpies.
Hull claimed an equaliser in first-half stoppage time but Ahmed Elmohamady’s effort was rightly disallowed after the Egyptian punched a cross into the net.  






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