Chelsea Close Gap on United
Win over West Ham United keeps the Premiership Title Race Alive
Chelsea's win over West Ham United closes the gap at the top of the Premiership and ensures continued pressure on Manchester United.
Chelsea ensured they kept the pressure on Manchester United in the race for the Premiership title with a 4-1 win at Upton Park over London neighbours West Ham United.
The opening exchanges were evenly contested with the club facing relegation causingChelsea few problems. Then the game sprang into life with three goals in a six minute period. Shaun Wright-Phillips gave Chelsea the lead after half-an hour with a fine individual goal only for the home team to level five minutes later following a rare mistake by the Chelsea goalkeeper, Petr Cech. That was the first League goal that Chelsea had conceded in eight Premiership games since their defeat at Liverpool in late January. However, within a minute Wright-Phillips had restored Chelsea’s lead with a volley.
Two goals in the first fifteen minutes of the second half from Salomon Kalou and Didier Drogba ensured Chelsea’s comfortable victory. The west London club are now three points behind Premiership leaders, Manchester United, with both clubs having five games left.
Relegation Battle:
West Ham remain in 19th place in the League, one place off the bottom, and looking almost certain to be relegated to the Championship at the end of the season. A year has made a great change where West Ham are concerned. Twelve months ago they contested a very close FA Cup Final with Liverpool and only a very late injury time equaliser took the game into extra time and an eventual penalty shoot-out win for the Merseyside club.
All of the clubs in the battle against relegation have four games remaining.
Watford who are at the bottom of the table lost 1-3 at Blackburn Rovers. The situation in the relegation zone remains unaltered after the mid-week games as all three teams involved lost – Sheffield United, West Ham United and Watford.
Future Games:
The contest for the Premiership continues at the weekend with Manchester United playing Middlesbrough at Old Trafford on Saturday evening while Chelsea travel to play the other north-east side, Newcastle United, at St. James Park on Sunday. Neither club can afford to make a mistake in this very closely contested title race.
At the other end of the table all of the clubs fighting against relegation play their matches on Saturday afternoon. The game with most significance will be the match between two of the sides threatened with the drop – Charlton Athletic play Sheffield United at The Valley. This is a must win game for both sides and will be a game filled with tension. Sheffield United are currently one place and two points ahead of Charlton so a Charlton win would see the two clubs swapping places with Charlton moving out of relegation and United dropping into trouble.
Three of the other four teams at the bottom of the Premiership have home games. Fulham play Blackburn Rovers at Craven Cottage and can expect a difficult game from the side who lost narrowly to Chelsea in last weekend’s FA Cup semi-finals. Blackburn are also hoping to make a late bid for a place in next year’s European competitions. West Ham face Everton, another team hoping to play in Europe next season who have come into a good run of form and will be looking for three points from their visit to Upton Park. Wigan have a very difficult game at Anfield against Champions League semi-finalists, Liverpool.
