John Terry's own goal blew the race for the title wide open once again as Crystal Palace defeated Chelsea.
The defender turned Joel Ward's 52nd-minute cross into his own net to hand the Eagles a 1-0 home win which lifts Tony Pulis' side one place to 16th, five points clear of the drop zone.
It proved to be a good day too for Manchester United manager David Moyes as a Wayne Rooney double helped to lift some of the pressure from his shoulders in a 4-1 win over Aston Villa. Rooney cancelled out Ashley Westwood's fine 11th-minute free-kick with a deft header and then fired United into the lead from the penalty spot after Juan Mata had been felled. Mata's first goal for the club gave the home side breathing space and Javier Hernandez wrapped up the win at the death.
United remain seventh in the table, but Southampton continued their pursuit with a 4-0 home victory over Newcastle which saw them leapfrog the Magpies into eighth. The Saints had to wait until stoppage time at the end of the first half to take the lead after being repeatedly thwarted by keeper Rob Elliot. However, once Jay Rodriguez had opened the scoring there was no way back for Alan Pardew's men as Rickie Lambert and Adam Lallana helped themselves to a goal apiece before Rodriguez sealed victory at the death with his second.
West Brom and Cardiff fought out a six-goal thriller at the Hawthorns. The Baggies went 2-0 up within nine minutes of the kick-off after Morgan Amalfitano floated an outrageous second-minute opener over Scotland goalkeeper David Marshall before fellow Scot Graham Dorrans extended West Brom's advantage.
The Bluebirds dragged themselves back into the game on the half-hour through Jordon Mutch's strike, and levelled 17 minutes from time when defender Steven Caulker powered home a header from Gary Medel's free-kick. Thievy Bifouma looked to have snatched victory for the home side three minutes into added time, only for Mats Daehli to deny them with virtually the last kick of the game.
Swansea eased to a 3-0 victory over Norwich. Jonathan de Guzman's first-half double laid the foundation with Wayne Routledge's second-half strike completing the job.
Peter Odemwingie's goal for Stoke was enough to see off Hull 1-0 as the Potters reached the 40-point mark.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article