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Manchester United, Chelsea win at Premier League
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-12-27 09:25 William Gallas and midfielder Frank Lampard put Chelsea ahead but Fulham came
back into the game with a strike from Brian McBride before the half hour and a
56th-minute penalty converted by Heidar Helguson.
Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho, referring to his team's reaction to Fulham's
fight-back, told reporters: "When you are in a comfortable position and you make
mistakes, it is hard to come back but I trust my players' mentality."
Fulham manager Chris Coleman told Sky Sports: "I though we showed tremendous
spirit, and courage, and we got back. Then the game could have gone either way."
Paul Scholes, Rio Ferdinand, who headed his second goal for United, and Ruud
van Nistelrooy scored at Old Trafford where manager Alex Ferguson was as
impressed by his defence.
"Our defending has been good in the last few games. We've hopefully come out
of that bad spell," he told United's official website after a third successive
league clean sheet.
"The result in Benfica was a killer for us but we've turned it around for
ourselves," he added, referring to United's 2-1 loss in Lisbon earlier this
month that put his side out of Europe.
BOWYER OFF
At Anfield, Michael Owen had an unhappy return to his former club with
Newcastle United, who went down to two first half goals and had midfielder Lee
Bowyer sent off for an ugly tackle on Xabi Alonso.
Steven Gerrard struck after a quarter of an hour and two minutes before the
interval Peter Crouch's shot came back off the post but went in after hitting
prostrate keeper Shay Given on the back of the head.
"We got off lightly. We were played off the park in the first half and 2-0
certainly didn't flatter them at halftime," Newcastle manager Graeme Souness was
quoted as saying on club's official website.
"They peppered our goal and we've got to learn from that."
Arsenal ended a run of three league defeats in which they had not scored by
winning 1-0 at Charlton Athletic to climb to seventh, 20 points adrift of
Chelsea and two behind Bolton Wanderers, held 0-0 by bottom team Sunderland, and
Wigan Athletic, who edged a thriller with Manchester City 4-3.
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