Lampard the saviour for Chelsea

Chelsea’s victory maintains their challenge for a Champions League place, if not an outside shot at the title, despite twice trailing to goals from Leeds’s Australian striker Harry Kewell and defender Teddy Lucic.

Lampard started his one-man show by providing the cross for Iceland striker Eidur Gudjohnsen to score with a stunning overhead kick in the 57th minute. The Chelsea midfielder then added the second himself in the 80th minute with a rasping drive from the edge of the area and finished off with a shot that was turned into the net by Leeds defender Dominic Matteo three minutes later.

Fourth-placed Chelsea moved onto 44 points, behind Newcastle United (45), Manchester United (47) and leaders Arsenal (52).

Chelsea coach Claudio Ranieri said: ‘‘We did everything — Leeds came into our half twice and scored two goals. It’s unbelievable. We were very nervous because we wanted to win. I’m very pleased because the guys believed right to the end of the match. It was a very emotional match.’’ Leeds manager Terry Venables was clearly disappointed at losing a game he thought his team had won. ‘‘We’d done so well, we’d led twice and kept our team very compact. As the game went on, we got stretched a little bit — but the goals they got, one’s a deflection, one’s an own goal.

‘‘You can’t blame Dom — you’d clear that 99 times out of 100. It was just one of those things,’’ Venables said. ‘‘Overall I thought we deserved to at least get something out of the game, and I thought we were going to win it. Everyone’s disappointed.’’ Leeds slipped one place to 13th in the 20-team standings.

Villa manager Graham Taylor was delighted with the upturn in his team’s fortunes — they had only scored four goals away in the league all season before Tuesday. Having been 2-0 up midway through the first half, Villa went in at the break drawing 2-2 after goals from Vassell and Iceland midfielder Joey Gudjonsson, on his debut, were cancelled out by Massimo Maccarone and Jonathan Greening. (Reuters)