Chelsea kept up its remorseless march to the English Premier league title with a 4-0 thrashing of Tottenham on Saturday.With none of their title rivals — liverpool, Arsenal and Manchester City — in league action last weekend, Chelsea provisionally extended their lead to seven points after capitalizing on a woeful second half from Spurs to score all its goals in the final 34 minutes.
Samuel Eto’o opened the scoring and then was fouled in the area by Younes Kaboul, earning the French defender a straight red card. Eden Hazard converted the 60th-minute penalty, and substitute Demba Ba added two late goals in the space of 75 seconds.
liverpool and Arsenal are seven points behind the leaders with a game in hand but Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho still thinks Manchester City, which is nine points adrift in fourth place having played three matches less, is the title favorite.
“We don’t have control of our destiny,” Mourinho said, “if we win all our matches then maybe we are not champions. If Man City win all their games, they are champions.”
Meanwhile, Arsenal reached the semi-finals of the FA Cup. The Gunners are without a trophy since 2005, with the FA Cup its likeliest chance of ending the drought after a drop in form in the league and a 2-0 loss to Bayern Munich in the first leg of the Champions league last 16.
Tottenham’s 24-year winless run at Stamford Bridge extended to 27 matches after the team imploded after a dominant first-half display. Spurs stayed in fifth, four points behind City having played three games more, but manager Tim Sherwood believes finishing in the top four is out of the question.
“The club talks about fourth - wake up,” Sherwood said. “You can’t legislate for the capitulation, you can’t have that. lack of characters, too many of them too nice to each other and you need to show a bit more guts and not want to be someone’s mate all the time.”
Mourinho is a game closer to winning the title in his first season back at Stamford Bridge and Chelsea’s run-in is easier than all its rivals, with Arsenal at home and liverpool away the only tough matches — on paper, at least.
With seven clean sheets in its last 10 league games and unbeaten in 14 matches, the team is ekeing out wins even when it isn’t playing well. “We’re grinding out results like the old Mourinho teams,” Chelsea captain John Terry said.The game turned on a mistake by Spurs defender Jan Vertonghen, who slipped and compounded his error by trying to hook the ball back to his goalkeeper. Eto’o nipped in and slotted a low finish into the corner.
Kaboul’s red card then spelt the end for Tottenham.Phil Jones, Wayne Rooney and Danny Welbeck scored for Man United at The Hawthorns, boosting confidence in the team that dropped to a season low after losing 2-0 at Olympiakos in the Champions league 11 days ago.