Chelsea return to winning ways

Chelsea are back in the top four, bouncing back from their New Year’s Eve defeat to Aston Villa with a 2-1 win at Wolves.

Brazilian midfielder Ramires had given Andre Villas Boas’ side the lead early in the second half.

But it looked as if they’d have to settle for a point when Stephen Ward drew Wolves level late on.

However Frank Lampard had the final say, converting Ashley Cole’s cross to give Chelsea their first win in five matches and ease some of the pressure on Villas-Boas.

“Well I think it was good to find the strength of character just after Wolves scored to continue to attack and to continue to have that small belief that we could score and we got it,” Villas-Boas said.

“I think we got extremely well rewarded. In the end I think it translates to a fair result bearing in mind the amount of chances we had in the first half which were a lot, and I think it’s a fair result bearing in mind the happenings of the game.”

Ten-man Arsenal missed the chance to go back above Chelsea after falling to a late defeat at London rivals Fulham.

Arsene Wenger’s side had lost just once in their last 12 league outings before this game, and took an early lead through Laurent Koscielny.

But the visitors lost Johan Djourou to a second yellow card with 12 minutes to go and Steve Sidwell equalised soon after.

Then striker Bobby Zamora grabbed an injury time winner for Fulham to seal their first win in four and leave Wenger furious.

“We are guilty because we still gave two goals away, I felt, in a stupid way, and we didn’t take our chances,” Wenger said.

“But as well, you must say that as neutral as you can be, nothing went for us from the referee for us today. Nothing at all. We cannot change that. We have to live with it unfortunately.”

Elsewhere there were wins for Swansea, Norwich and Stoke City.

The Welsh side got their first league away win of the season at Aston Villa. Norwich City kept QPR in trouble with a 2-1 win a Loftus Road. And Blackburn came back down to earth after that stunning win at Old Trafford – beaten at home by Stoke City.

“We feel it’s a missed opportunity today because the way the results have fell, we could have found ourselves with a positive result and out of the bottom three,” Blackburn manager Steve Kean said.

“But it’s very tight and there’s other teams that have been dragged in it now so we know if we can keep performing and digging another couple of results out we can find ourselves in a much better position.”

Rovers stay three points from safety after their 12th defeat of the season.