Manchester United took advantage of a 1-0 City defeat at Swansea to go top with a double from Wayne Rooney against West Brom at Old Trafford while a last-gasp goal at the Emirates gave Arsenal a 2-1 victory over Newcastle and took them within a point of Tottenham who lost 1-0 at Everton. Queens Park Rangers lost 2-1 at Bolton and Liverpool fell to a single goal at Sunderland while ten-man Stoke lost 1-0 at Chelsea. David Hoilett scored both goals for Blackburn at Wolves and a last-minute goal at Aston Villa settled the match in favour of the hosts against Fulham while Wigan drew 1-1 at Norwich. On Tuesday evening Steven Gerrard scored a hat-trick for Liverpool as Everton were taken apart 3-0 at Anfield.
In Spain the top 2 both won away from home with Ronaldo scoring twice in Real Madrid’s 3-2 win at Real Betis and Messi scoring both goals from Barcelona at Racing Santander.
Bayern Munich hammered Hoffenheim 7-1 with a Gomez hat-trick in the German League and went on to batter Basel 7-0 with Gomez bagging another 4 in the Champions League where Real Madrid cruised 4-1 past their visitors from CSKA Moscow. A 2-1 home win was not enough for Inter as Marseille progressed on the away-goals rule while Chelsea overturned their 3-1 defeat at Napoli to take the match to extra time and win 4-1 at Stamford Bridge. The Europa League saw the exit of both Manchester sides with United going down 2-1 away to a dominant Athletic Bilbao and City going out on away goals at home to Sporting Lisbon despite heroically coming back from 2 down to score 3 times after the break.
