Chelsea on course

Goals from Drogba and Lampard gave Chelsea a vital 2-0 victory at Liverpool to keep them a point ahead of Manchester United who won 1-0 at Sunderland with only a match remaining. Tottenham earned a Champions League place with 1-0 wins at home to Bolton and away to Manchester City denying their Manchurian hosts the privilege and threatening to overtake Arsenal in 3rd place after the Gunners lost 2-1 at Blackburn. Aston Villa had already missed out on a top 4 spot losing 3-1 at Manchester City. With their 2-2 draw at Wigan, Hull became the 3rd team after Portsmouth and Burnley to be relegated from the Premier League. Newcastle and West Bromwich Albion were promoted to the Premier League and will be joined by one of Nottingham Forest, Cardiff City, Leicester City and Blackpool after the play-offs.

Fulham make Europa final

Solomon Kalou scored a hat-trick as Chelsea demolished Stoke 7-0 at the Bridge while Ryan Giggs converted 2 spot-kicks for Manchester United who kept the pressure on with a 3-1 home win against Spurs. Arsenal and Manchester City played out a goalless draw at the Emirates while Milner scored the only goal from the spot to give Aston Villa 3 points at home to Birmingham and a brace from Steven Gerrard helped Liverpool to a 4-0 win at relegated Burnley. A last minute penalty saw Fulham fall 2-1 at Everton while Portsmouth fought back with a double from Dindane to draw 2-2 at Bolton and West Ham picked up 3 home points with their 3-2 win over Wigan.
Olic scored all 3 goals at Lyon as Bayern Munich reached the Champions League final where they will meet Jose Mourinho’s Inter who knocked reigning champions Barcelona out despite losing 1-0 at the Camp Nou. In the Europa League Diego Forlan who had scored the only goal in the first leg gave Atletico Madrid the decisive away goal in extra time to silence the home crowd at Liverpool, but there were huge celebrations at Craven Cottage as Fulham came from a goal down to win with a skilfully taken goal from Simon Davis and a 76th minute goal from Zoltan Gera to reach the final where they will meet Atletico Madrid in Hamburg on May 12th

Gunners throw title hopes away

Arsenal let a 2 goal lead slip in the last 10 minutes to return empty handed from Wigan conceding the title race to Manchester United and Chelsea. Paul Scholes kept United on track breaking the deadlock with a header in the last seconds of added-on time at Manchester City while Chelsea fell 2-1 at Tottenham who are fighting for 4th to secure a place in next season’s Champions League. Tim Cahill scored a last minute goal to give Everton a 3-2 win at Blackburn while Aston Villa came from behind to win 2-1 at Portsmouth, and Liverpool eased past West Ham 3-0 at Anfield.
After dropping points in a goalless draw at Espanol, Barcelona travelled by coach to Italy due to the volcanic dust where they lost 3-1 to Inter in the first leg of the Champions League semi final. In the other semi, Arjen Robben scored the only goal of the match for Bayern Munich at home to Lyon after both teams had been reduced to 10 men with the dismissal of Franck Ribery and later on Toulalan.
In the first semi-finals of the Europa League Liverpool’s marathon trip to Atletico Madrid ended in a narrow 1-0 defeat while Fulham did better, holding hosts Hamburg to a goalless draw.