LONDON, 3 April 2005 — Teammates Kieron Dyer and Lee Bowyer were sent off for fighting each other as Newcastle United ended with eight men on the pitch in a 3-0 home defeat by Aston Villa in the English Premier League yesterday.
Dyer and Bowyer were dismissed by referee Barry Knight after 82 minutes just after Aston Villa went 3-0 up with a second Gareth Barry penalty in seven minutes to end Newcastle’s 12-match unbeaten run.
Meanwhile, Chelsea maintained their charge towards a first league title for 50 years as a deflected Frank Lampard free kick and two Eider Gudjohnsen goals gave them a 3-1 win at Southampton that took them to 80 points.
Arsenal nosed ahead in the battle for second as Thierry Henry, who missed France’s World Cup matches last week with a calf injury, returned to score a second successive league hat-trick at Highbury in a 4-1 victory over Norwich City.
That took the champions to 67 points, above Manchester United on goal difference after their rivals were held to a goalless Old Trafford draw by Blackburn Rovers.
For once, however, Chelsea were not the main talking point as Newcastle hogged the headlines for the second day running. On Friday their fans were celebrating the news that skipper Alan Shearer said he would play on for another season but the former England captain was a peripheral figure on Saturday.
Juan Pablo Angel put Villa ahead after five minutes and the visitors wrapped it with two Gareth Barry penalties.
The first came after Steven Taylor was dismissed after 73 minutes for handball on the line and the second seven minutes later when Angel was brought down.
Dyer and Bowyer then took center stage, with Souness saying later that Bowyer had been the aggressor and “will have to accept any punishment coming his way.” Both players appeared at a post-match news conference to apologize to “everyone concerned with the club” but Souness was left flabbergasted.
At Highbury Henry, who scored all three when Arsenal beat Portsmouth 3-0 a month ago, scored after 19, 22 and 66 minutes to take his club tally for the season to 30. Freddie Ljungberg grabbed the other.
Darren Huckerby briefly gave Norwich some hope when he scored after 30 minutes to make it 2-1 but Norwich remained in bottom place with relegation looking increasingly likely.
Elsewhere, Liverpool beat Bolton Wanderers 1-0 with an 86th minute header from Igor Biscan to move to within a point of fourth-placed Everton, who play West Bromwich Albion on Sunday. Middlesbrough won 1-0 at relegation-threatened Crystal Palace with a first half header from Franck Queudrue, while Charlton Athletic leveled in the dying seconds of stoppage time to draw 2-2 with Manchester City.
Hearts Dent Celtic
Title Hopes
In Glasgow, Celtic manager Martin O’Neill said international duty had taken its toll on his players after they suffered a shock 2-0 home defeat by Hearts yesterday.
First-half goals by Lee Miller and ex-Celtic player Mark Burchill gave the Edinburgh club the points to dent the Scottish champions’ title aspirations. They remain top but city rivals Rangers, two points adrift, will leapfrog them if they win at Motherwell today.
Elsewhere, Hibernian beat Dundee United 3-2 with a late header from Gary Smith to stay third with 53 points from 31 games.
Bayern Stay Top but Suffer
Pizarro Blow
In Berlin, Bayern Munich will be without Peru striker Claudio Pizarro for their Champions League quarterfinal first leg showdown with Chelsea after he was injured in yesterday’s 3-0 win at VfL Wolfsburg.
The victory, Bayern’s fifth in their last six league matches, kept them top of the German Bundesliga but it came at a price with Pizarro suffering a thigh injury in the sixth minute.
Pizarro, who scored twice to help Bayern eliminate Arsenal last month, is expected to be out for 10 to 12 days, ruling him out of Wednesday’s first leg against the English league leaders in London and probably the return leg in Munich on April 12.
Schalke 04, who trail Bayern on goal difference, also won easily, beating FC Nuremberg 4-1. Bayern, chasing their 19th Bundesliga title, and Schalke, who have not won it since 1958, both have 56 points with seven matches left.
Real Sociedad Beat Osasuna
to Ease Relegation Fears
In Madrid, two goals in three minutes all but guaranteed Real Sociedad’s Primera Liga survival as they swept aside struggling Osasuna 2-0 yesterday.
Sociedad moved up to 11th in the table, 15 points above the bottom three, but Osasuna’s freefall continued as their 12th consecutive league defeat left them 17th, seven points above 18th-placed Real Mallorca.
The Navarrans looked to be in control of the game before Sociedad’s Russian midfielder Valery Karpin created the first goal and scored the second, just before the break.
Karpin’s angled pass from the edge of the area allowed striker Gari Uranga to slip behind his marker and score with a precise shot into the far corner after 42 minutes.
Karpin lashed Uranga’s pass high into the net three minutes later after striker Darko Kovacevic had intercepted a poor back pass and fed his strike partner in the area.
