Terry sees through Spurs draw amid taunts

England captain John Terry produced a typical block to spare Chelsea defeat in a 1-1 draw against Tottenham Hotspur in his first match since he was charged by UK prosecutors with racial abuse.

Chelsea centre-back Terry blocked a goal bound shot from Emmanuel Adebayor in stoppage time to ensure a point for the visitors at White Hart Lane on Thursday.

The draw left Spurs third in the Premier League table, two points in front of their London rivals, after Adebayor’s opener was cancelled out by an equaliser from Chelsea striker Daniel Sturridge.

And it meant Spurs were nine points adrift of leaders Manchester City and Chelsea 11 shy of the table-toppers.

The build-up centred around Terry, charged on Wednesday with racially abusing QPR defender Anton Ferdinand during Chelsea’s loss at Loftus Road in October.

But Chelsea manager Andre Villas-Boas, speaking after Thursday’s point, praised Terry’s resolve.

“Since the situation he has improved,” he told Sky Sports.

‘Extraordinary’
“He has grown in terms of performance. He’s a reference point for this team. It shows his character and strength and personality.

“His effort for the collective is extraordinary,” the Portuguese added.

Van Persie proud of record

Arsenal striker Robin Van Persie has revealed his pride at equalling Thierry Henry’s club record for the most Premier League goals in a calendar year.

But the prolific Van Persie is adamant helping Arsenal be successful is more important than any personal glory.

The Dutchman has scored 34 times in 2011 and has two matches left this year to surpass the all-time Premier League record of 36 goals by Alan Shearer in 1995.

Van Persie, who equalled Henry’s tally with his penalty in the win at Aston Villa, said: “It is a big honour to equal Thierry’s record because he is probably the best player Arsenal ever had.

“To achieve what he did in a year is really special. It makes me proud.

“I think it has helped that I haven’t missed a single Premier League game and featured for 90 minutes in most of them.

“When you have a good run, and you feel fresh and fit, you try things, you take more risks here and there than, for example, if you are just coming back from injury.

“You always need a couple of games (to get fully sharp) when you’re back from injury.

“As a striker I think it is really important to have a go. If you look at my performances, I take more risks now because I know with the team behind me I will always get more chances.

“It’s not that I only get one chance normally, I always get one, two, three, sometimes four chances in a game. That sort of tells me that I can take a risk here and there.

But Van Persie stressed: “It (the scoring records) is not my main target. The main target is to win games and to help my team out and to have a good run.

“After losing to Manchester City, it is always really important to bounce back after a defeat. Great teams do bounce back and that’s what we had to do at Villa on Wednesday.

“Now we have Wolves on Tuesday (Wednesday AEDT), then afterwards QPR both at home, so hopefully we can have a good run again.”

Van Persie is also adamant he takes pleasure from creating as well as scoring goals for the Gunners, for whom he has netted 47 times in 55 games in all competitions during 2011.

He said: “I want to help my team, I want to help them with assists, help them with goals, help them with good football.

“In some games that means holding the ball when we’re struggling.

“For me it is not just scoring. Football is more for me than just scoring the ball in the back of the net.

“I think football can give you much more than to score. For example at Villa I put a nice pass through to Aaron Ramsey. I do enjoy that as much as a goal.”

Van Persie is quick to praise Arsenal for recovering from a poor start to the season.

He said: “Maybe I am a little bit surprised we have done so well since then. But we had to get used to new players as well.

“To be fair I have to give lots of credits to Mikel (Arteta), Per (Mertesacker), Thomas Vermaelen, Yossi (Benayoun) as well. They are great characters and they’re really helpful in every area.

“They picked it up very well and I do need assistance, they are always helping me.

“For example, Mikel played seven years at Everton, two years at Rangers. You can tell that he is an experienced player.

“Yossi is similar and Per Mertesacker played 80 games for Germany so that really helped.”

VAN PERSIE: “ON TV I SEE ONLY ARSENAL AND BARÇA”

Arsenal’s Dutch striker praised the FC Barcelona

The Arsenal player Robin van Persie admitted that on TV “sees only Arsenal matches and Barça.” He also says that for him, FC Barcelona is the only team that “can win games by playing nice.”

It is not the first time that Arsenal’s Dutch striker speaks well of FC Barcelona and even sometimes sounded as futuristic to play for Barça. But this time, in which Van Persie says that “I’m still a lover of the beautiful game and always will but I have become more realistic,” he also recognizes that you can not always play nice and pretty, but stands as Barca exception.

BARCA-MADRID CHAMPIONS, KING OF THE TV OF 2011

More than 14 million people watched the game in which Real Madrid eliminated Barcelonain the Champions

Barca has not only been the major player of the year Futbolito 2011 (League World Champions and clubs among other titles) but has also been the “interpreter” of the most watched television show of the year in Spain.

We are talking of the match in early May at the Camp Nou against Real Madrid round of the Champions League semifinals. Barca eliminated Madrid and saw that game more than 14 million viewers, with an audience share of 66.9%. The minutes of gold, at 22h26 ‘had to 16,777,000 people in front of the TV watching the game. No other TV show that year was much audience in Spain. It has also been the most-watched Champions League match in history.

And more data. It was the second game of soccer with a larger audience in the history of television in Spain, surpassed only by the final of Euro 2008 when he defeated Spain Germany (14.482 million viewers and 80.9% share). Instead, this Barca game against Madrid was more seen that the South Africa World Cup final in which Spain won the Netherlands (12.969 million and 77.2% share).

Finally say that 8 of the 15 most watched events of the year in the 1 were the Champions League matches, and five of them with Barca star.

Ferguson hails ‘superb’ United

Sir Alex Ferguson was effusive in his praise of his team after Manchester United gave Fulham a 5-0 hiding at Craven Cottage.

United continued to keep pace with Manchester City as goals from Danny Welbeck, Nani and Ryan Giggs in the first half settled the game before Wayne Rooney and Dimitar Berbatov wrapped things up near the end with two late goals.

Rooney’s goal saw him become the youngest player to reach 300 Premier League appearances while Berbatov notched his 50th goal for the club.

“I think it was one of our best performances of the season, particularly in the first half when we played some superb football,” Ferguson told Sky Sports.

“It is not an easy place to come, we have known that for years now but tonight the players were on song and continued on from their good performance on Sunday against QPR.”

Ferguson stressed the importance of pushing for big wins in the chase for the league title.

“Yes, they do help. We showed good patience before we got the first goal, though,” he said.

“We kept the ball, passed it around and got the penetration so it was a good start to the game and we got control and kept it until half-time.”

The United boss also reserved special praise for the breathtaking goals scored by Rooney and Berbatov.

“It was a great strike from Wayne and another great one from Berbatov near the end,” he said.

“We had to make changes tonight, we had Antonio Valencia at right-back and Rio Ferdinand missing, so great credit to the players for standing up to those problems.”

Fulham manager Martin Jol was frank about Fulham’s mistakes in their execution after witnessing his side’s collapse against United.

“If you have eight attempts on goal like they did and score five of them, then it’s a horror scenario,” said Jol.

“They played around us on the flanks and we did not defend well. Nani scored a header which tells you all.”

“We let ourselves down. We improved and could have scored a few but it is not easy when you are 3-0 down.”

“They have a lot of quality but we were not aggressive enough. Conceding early is not good for your confidence. It was too easy for them.”

“We have to pick ourselves up because there are a lot of teams on the same amount of points.”

“We couldn’t get the ball to Moussa Dembele and Clint Dempsey, never mind Andy Johnson, and that was disappointing.”

Wenger happy to ride luck

Arsene Wenger says Arsenal were fortunate to come away with three points in their 2-1 win over Aston Villa at Villa Park.

Yossi Benayoun headed home from a late Robin van Persie corner on Wednesday to give the Gunners an important victory, after Marc Albrighton scored the English Premier League’s 20,000th goal to cancel out the Dutchman’s first-half penalty.

When asked whether his side had been fortunate to win the match, Wenger said: “Yes, because Villa were dangerous.”

“I must say two things; first of all, we had two difficult away games where we have had to give absolutely everything physically and in the first half we controlled the game quite well.”

“Second half, Villa came back to 1-1 and it was a little bit of a difficult period but then we stabilised the game again, and in the last 10 to 15 minutes you could feel we were on top of the game again.”

“You can only congratulate Villa, they played well, gave everything. It was a very intense game and we got a very late three points.”

“We were a bit unlucky on Sunday (in their 1-0 loss to Manchester City) and today maybe a bit lucky, but overall it was important to re-start with a win tonight. If Villa continue to play like that they will come up the table because they had an

VILLA ALREADY HAVE THE CUP WAS MISSING

On Sunday, FC Barcelona managed a global victory. It is officially the best club in the world, which is through the efforts of all members of the team and the club in general. However, the final day there was a notable absentee, the Barca top Villa, who had to be moved to Spain for surgery on his left leg after fracturing the tibia in the match against Al-Sadd.

His companions, Puyol, Pique, Cesc and Fontes (on behalf of the team) did not want to run out the Spaniard lifted the trophy, approaching the Chiron Clinic in Barcelona striker began his hopefully short recovery.