Premier League review:European hopefuls Aston Villa are without a win in six games in all competitions after a 2-0 defeat at Manchester City. Mark Hughes's side took the lead in the 24th minute through Elano's penalty after James Milner clumsily fouled Shaun Wright-Phillips in the box.
Villa’s fightback failed to really materialise before Wright-Phillips scored a minute from time after a nice one-two with Stephen Ireland.
Martin O'Neill's side are now just three points ahead of Arsenal afte the Gunners beat West Brom 3-1 last night.
Republic of Ireland captain Robbie Keane starred in Tottenham’s 4-0 win over Middelsbrough, the team that beat his old club Liverpool 2-0 at Anfield at the weekend.
Keane gave Spurs the lead after nine minutes before Roman Pavlyuchenko doubled the lead soon after with a well-taken finish.
It was 3-0 when Keane’s sublime ball put Aaron Lennon through and the winger capitalised on the opportunity.
The Dubliner provided the killer pass again when Lennon’s second late on completed the rout.
Stoke jumped out of the relegation zone with a 2-0 win at home to Bolton.
James Beattie scored his fifth goal in seven appearances after arriving in the January transfer window.
Gary Cahill had a second-half goal correctly disallowed as Bolton tried to force an equaliser but Stoke doubled the lead through Ricardo Fuller when the Trotters failed to clear Rory Delap’s long throw-in.
Blackburn slipped to third from bottom after they could only draw 0-0 with Everton.
Steven Pienaar came the closest to scoring in the first half but stand-in keeper Jason Brown denied him with a diving save.
Blackburn hit the bar in the second half through Stephen Warnock’s free-kick and could also have won it had Jason Roberts not squandered a brilliant one-on-one chance with Toffees goalkeeper Tim Howard.
West Ham took a hard-earned three points from Wigan in a 1-0 victory which saw both sides have a man sent off at the JJB Stadium.
The Hammers went ahead 11 minutes before the break with a sublime goal by Carlton Cole — who was dismissed with a second booking three minutes later for a high kick.
Early in the second half Wigan’s Lee Cattermole received a straight red for a bad lunge on Scott Parker, while later on Hammers youngster Jack Collison was taken off with a bad knee injury after twisting his leg awkwardly.
Hull snatched a barely-deserved three points at Fulham as Manucho’s last-gasp goal handed them a 1-0 victory at Craven Cottage.
Simon Davies and Andrew Johnson missed good first-half chances while the home side deserved a penalty when Bobby Zamora seemed to be fouled by Kevin Kilbane.
But Richard Garcia’s cross two minutes into added time found Manucho near the far post and the striker converted before wheeling away in delight.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/irishtimes/YVIRIOZQ35EWRPZXR27KGMO6YU.png)