Friday 16 December 2011

City beaten


As Manchester United bounced back from their European disappointment, to defeat Wolves 4-1 with 2 goals each from Rooney and Nani at Old Trafford, Manchester City suffered their first loss of the season, losing 2-1 at Chelsea with Lampard grabbing a late winner from the spot against their ten-man visitors to close the gap at the top. Arsenal celebrated their 125th birthday at the Emirates with a van Persie master-goal the difference between them and Everton while Tottenham were unlucky to lose 2-1 at Stoke and there were 2-1 away wins for Wigan at West Brom and Aston Villa at Bolton. Sunderland won 2-1 against Blackburn with 2 late goals in Martin O’Neill’s first match in charge at the Stadium of Light while QPR lost 1-0 at Liverpool and Fulham went down 2-0 at Swansea. Demba Ba netted a double for ten-man Newcastle who lost 4-2 at Norwich from whom Grant Holt scored twice.
In Spain Barcelona recovered from an early Real Madrid goal to win 3-1 and overtake their hosts at the top of the table on goal difference.
The group stage of the Europa League was completed with Fulham who had taken a 2 goal lead at the Cottage crashing out to a last gasp equalizer against Odense allowing Wislaw to qualify after their 2-1 win against group winners Twente in Krakow. One goal was enough to give Birmingham a home win over Maribor but not enough to see them through as Braga drew 1-1 in Brugge and Tottenham sailed to a 4-0 win at Shamrock Rovers but suffered a similar fate as ten-man Robin Kazan drew 1-1 at Paok leaving Stoke the only English side to qualify for the knock-out stage despite losing 3-1 at Besiktas after being reduced to 10 men for 32 minutes. Red Bull Salzburg came from 2 down to win 3-2 at Slovan Bratislava and qualify ahead of PSG despite their 4-2 victory over group winners Athletico Bilbao in Paris.
In the World Club Cup Barcelona and Santos reached the final.

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