Goals from Raheem Sterling, Kevin De Bruyne and Ilkay Gundogan secured a 3-0 win for Manchester City against Aston Villa.

David Silva, making a club-record 267th Premier League start, dragged his shot wide with the best chance of a frustrating first half for the champions.

City’s play was disjointed, but as the half progressed the Etihad side began creating chances.

Sterling, the man of the moment, weaved his way past two challenges before having his effort blocked, and Joao Cancelo, always willing to get forward and supplement attacks, had his shot from distance saved.

But Villa, impressive this season after their promotion in May, weren’t going to lie down and die – and moments later, they were almost ahead when John Stones’ loose pass was pounced upon by John McGinn.

His curling effort was saved by Ederson low to his right and former City midfielder Douglas Luiz almost got to the rebound but the ball was nicked away at the last by Cancelo.

City looked somewhat off the pace, but a moment of real quality almost opened up Villa. A slick passing move involving Gundogan and the electric Sterling ended with David Silva’s first-time effort going inches past the post. It would have been some goal.

The deadlock was broken seconds after the restart. A superb, pinpoint long ball from Ederson was deftly flicked on by Jesus, who was stronger than Tyrone Mings, and Sterling raced clear to finish expertly.

It was his 13th goal in 14 games this season, a remarkable return from one of the world’s best players.

Jesus was an inche away from nodding home Kevin De Bruyne’s free-kick, and the striker had an effort cleared off the line by the thigh of Mings. It wasn’t going his way in front of goal.

But City’s lead was doubled when Silva got the slightest of touches to De Bruyne’s delivery to send the ball past Tom Heaton, before Gundogan’s scissor-kick finish after some pinball in the area made it 3-0.

City played out the final few minutes with 10 men after Fernandinho received a second yellow card and there was still time for further drama when Jesus’ effort clipped the bar and McGinn hit the post for Villa with seconds remaining.

Man City’s third consecutive victory moves them three points behind Liverpool ahead of the leaders’ Sunday match against Tottenham Hotspur.

Villa’s first loss in three drops them to 13th place with 11 points, half of City’s total.

Photo Credit: premierleague.com

Chelsea players are proving to be worthy of their high salaries with their recent performances in the Premier League.

Lampard has placed his trust in a number of young players like Tammy Abraham, Callum Hudson-Odoi, Mason Mount and Fikayo Tomori.

However, it is the more experienced players that are leading the salary list as the likes of Willian, N’Golo Kante and Olivier Giroud are among the most well-paid aces in the squad.

According to Sportrac, goalkeeper Kepa Arrizabalaga and star midfielder Kante are the two top earners as they both make £150,000 a week.

They are closely followed by January signing Christian Pulisic as well as Willian and Hudson-Odoi, who recently signed a lucrative five-year deal worth £120,000 a week, report Daily Express.

Abraham is expected to climb up the list as he has been strongly linked with a new £100,000-a-week contract at Chelsea which will double his current earnings at the club.

But how much is everyone else on and how much do Lampard’s prolific youngsters make in their breakout season?

Kepa Arrizabalaga: £150,000

N’Golo Kante: £150,000

Christian Pulisic: £145,000

Willian: £120,000

Callum Hudson-Odoi: £120,000

Jorginho: £110,000

Olivier Giroud: £110,000

Mateo Kovacic: £106,673

Marcos Alonso: £100,000

Ross Barkley: £100,000

Pedro: £100,000

Antonio Rudiger : £100,000

Cesar Azpilicueta: £90,000

Michy Batshuayi : £90,000

Andreas Christensen: £80,000

Mason Mount: £77,000

Tammy Abraham: £50,000

Emerson Palmieri: £42,000

Kurt Zouma: £40,000

Ruben Loftus-Cheek: £35,000

Willy Caballero : £30,000

Marco van Ginkel: £27,885

Michael Hector: £17,000

Chelsea boss Frank Lampard has confirmed the Blues will be without N’Golo Kante, Ross Barkley, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Antonio Rudiger and Andreas Christensen for their trip to Burnley.

The Blues travel to Turf Moor on Saturday evening looking for a fourth successive victory in the Premier League and on the back of an impressive Champions League win over Ajax.

Lampard will have to make do without a number of first-team stars, however, after confirming on Friday that Kante and Barkley would miss Saturday’s fixture.

England midfielder Loftus-Cheek, German defender Rudiger and Denmark star Christensen have also failed to recover in time to feature for Chelsea.

Speaking to the media, Lampard said: ‘Loftus-Cheek is well out, Rudiger and N’Golo [are both] not ready for the weekend. ‘We need to get him [Kante] right now. Christensen and Barkley are both out as well.’

Asked how long he expects to be without French World Cup-winner Kante, Lampard responded: ‘I don’t know. I just want him fit.

‘He might be suffering from the big injury at the end of last season. There is no time-frame at the moment. ‘Rudiger had a bad injury, this is a fall-out of last season, that is the nature of it. We need to remember that, but he is close.’

Burnley host Chelsea sitting eighth in the Premier League, having only lost one of their last five league fixtures, report the Metro.

And Lampard added: ‘It’s a tough place to go. They have a strong way of playing, they are well drilled. They can give you big problems.

‘It is a tough match. You have to respect the teams you play, it will be a physical battle.

‘They have been good. I have watched a lot of their games. They are scoring goals. They had a tough time at the early stages of last season, they have always been a difficult game.’

On Burnley boss Sean Dyche, Lampard said: ‘What Sean has done is get a club into the Premier League and sustain their position.

‘It’s a very nice story. I know the hard work it takes to keep going and get good results. He’s doing very well.’

Reports in England claim Chelsea scouts watched Lazio’s Sergej Milinkovic-Savic in their Europa League match at Celtic with Frank Lampard considering the Serbian midfielder as his ‘heir’.

The Serbia international of 13 caps has been at Lazio since the summer of 2015 and has scored 33 goals and contributed 23 assists in 174 matches during that time.

He helped Lazio win the Italian Cup last season, scoring in their 2-0 win over Atalanta in the final having eliminated both Milan clubs en route.

According to Sportsmail, the London club are likely to make a move for the 24-year-old at the end of the season once their transfer embargo has been lifted.

In the past, Lazio president Claudio Lotito has refused offers approaching €100million (£86m) for the player he regards as the ‘sergeant’ of the side.

The Serbian has scored in the Serie A fixture against Genoa and the Europa League game with Rennes so far this season.

Lazio manager Simone Inzaghi is resigned to losing the player in June with several offers from overseas expected to come in.

Milinkovic-Savic played all of their 2-1 defeat at Celtic Park on Thursday night, with Christopher Jullien scoring an 89th-minute winner for Celtic.

Southampton were scandalously beaten by Leicester City with a rcord-breaking 9-0 on Friday night in a Premier League clash.

It rained goals at a wet St Mary’s Stadium as the fantastic Foxes secured the biggest-ever away win in the Premier League and matched the overall record set when Manchester United beat Ipswich Town 9-0 at home in 1995.

Ben Chilwell scored the first after 10 minutes with a goal that involved Saints left-back Ryan Bertrand being retrospectively sent off.

For a foul in the build-up to the goal, meanwhile, Bertrand was given a straight red card after a high challenge on Ayoze Pérez, and to add to Southampton’s woes, Youri Tielemans made it 2-0 seven minutes later.

Then, Pérez scored his first goal for the Football Club after playing a one-two with Tielemans, while the Spaniard’s second of the game arrived in emphatic fashion as he sent a sweet half-volley into the back of the net six minutes before the break.

There was still time for a fifth goal in the first half, too, with Chilwell again providing the delivery, as he found Jamie Vardy in the six-yard box. The City No.9 brought the deflected cross under control and cut past his marker before slamming past Gunn.

It took just over 10 minutes for City to find their sixth goal after the break, as Pérez controlled Barnes’ pass and slotted in to score his first-ever hat-trick for the Foxes.

It was 7-0 a minute later, as Chilwell scooped the ball into Vardy, who headed in his second of the night and his eighth of the Premier League campaign inside the hour mark.

James Maddison’s late free-kick meant Leicester surpassed Man Utd’s 8-1 away win at Nottingham Forest in 1999.

Vardy’s stoppage-time penalty equalled the biggest victory in any Premier League match as Brendan Rodgers’ side made history in the opening fixture of Matchweek 10.

Photo Credit: premierleague.com

Icredible pictures have emerged of Christian Pulisic visiting Chelsea as a seven-year-old back in 2006 – 13 years before the Blues made him the most expensive American footballer of all time.

The £58million switch to Stamford Bridge shattered the previous record set by John Brooks’ £15.1million move to Wolfsburg back in 2017.

The 21-year-old made his home debut in the Blues’ 1-1 draw with Leicester back in August.

And while London may be a new home for Pulisic – that draw wasn’t the first time Stamford Bridge has made an impression on him.

In a video posted by The Players’ Tribune, the ex Dortmund star revealed pictures of himself as a wide-eyed youngster in awe, visiting Stamford Bridge for the first time.

Photo Credit: The Sun

Samuel Chukwueze has officially extended his contract at Spanish club Villarreal with a €100m release clause.

The 20-year-old Nigerian is enjoying an impressive rise to prominence for the Yellow Submarine’s first-team squad after only making his debut in November last year.

The player’s former contract at the contract contained a €40m release clause which would allow bigger clubs in European football to circle for his signature.

According to Diario AS, as cited by Football Espana, the €100m release clause will be in place for the next two years before dropping to €80m in the third year, which would allow the player to move for less and reward his loyalty.

The Nigerian international is now a regular in Javi Calleja’s side having already made eight appearances in La Liga this campaign and looks set to have a bright future at the top level.

The new deal is said to be in recognition of his growth as a player and the potential he possesses.

Photo Crewdit: Twitter @Villarreal CF

Reports have emerged on how Chelsea chiefs supposedly forced Maurizio Sarri to play Callum Hudson-Odoi when he was in charge.

The 18-year-old wasn’t initially in the plans of Sarri who now manages Juventus.

But the revelation was made by Piet de Visser, who is an adviser to Roman Abramovich, report The Sun.

He told De Volksrant: “I told Chelsea: ‘Never lose Hudson-Odoi, he will be the new [Eden] Hazard.’

“But Marina [Granovskaia, Chelsea chief executive] said: ‘He didn’t want to sign’.

“And you know why not? Because Sarri didn’t play him.

“Then Sarri was instructed to deploy him, and he was their best player. And he signed for four years.”

Hudson-Odoi put pen to paper on a new five-year deal after Frank Lampard took the reins.

Frank Lampard has revealed the reason he refused to rush Christian Pulisic into the first-team despite the hue and cry from pundits criticizing him for not including the winger.

Chelsea fans were left raging on social media after Lampard decided to leave out Pulisic from his starting line-up to face Ajax.

Pulisic joined his Chelsea teammates in the summer after completing his £58million move from Borussia Dortmund to Chelsea in January.

The American has not been active in the club’s first team. But things began to look good for him in Chelsea’s shirt with his stunning cameo in the Blues 1-0 victory over Newcastle last weekend.

He, again, came off the bench to play a major role in Chelsea’s 1-0 win away at Ajax on Wednesday night.

The 21-year-old came on for Willian after the hour mark at the Johan Cruyff ArenA and set up Michy Batshuayi’s winner with five minutes to play.

Pulisic latched onto a pass from Mason Mount on the left flank before running at Sergino Dest, where he then performed a series of step-overs and drilled a low cross into the box.

The goal gave Chelsea an impressive win over last year’s beaten semi-finalists, with the Blues now sitting atop their group.

And after the game, Lampard was full of praise for Pulisic, while explaining why he didn’t want to rush him into the first-team, report the Daily Mirror.

“The performance tonight and his last couple of performances off the bench show something of that of course, because he’s come on and made differences,” he said.

“In terms of handling him, I basically tried to shut my ears to too much of the outside talk.

“With a big player, there’s a lot said and if you listen to it all the time, you can wonder what you’re doing.

“I understood the quality of Christian. I understood his young age. He’s just turned 21 recently and it’s a big move for him.

“And I have other options for him in those areas. Let’s give him full credit.

“He wants to know what I want for him, what the PL is like, what his new team-mates are like, that’s not always going to be an easy road.

“I’ve just stayed calm with it, I see the big picture with him.

“I want him to be successful at this club because he’s a good lad, he wants to do very well, that’s very clear.

“Acting like he’s acting, training like he’s trained the last two or three weeks, playing like he’s played the last two or three weeks obviously makes me very, very happy.”

Joe Cole has pinpointed the transformation Chelsea have witnessed since Frank Lampard took over in the summer, saying that the new Blues manager has been far more flexible than former boss Maurizio Sarri.

Lampard replaced Sarri in the summer, with the Italian spending just one season in charge at Stamford Bridge.

Sarri led Chelsea to a top-four finish in the Premier League and the Europa League trophy but he was often criticised for not changing his style of play during his time at the club.

But Cole says that is one thing Lampard has done during his short time in charge so far.

“The key thing there is the flexibility,” Cole said on BT Sport.

“Too much under the Sarri era it was so monotonous and so robotic.

“Frank’s changed the system two or three times here, he’s played Mount in two or three positions, because these lads are well-schooled in that way of playing.

“So as they’ve come into the team, it’s just been smooth.

“I think continuing with that level of flexibility, who they’re playing against, can they adjust, and I think these boys, the education they’re getting, is fantastic and they’re winning on the job.”

Chelsea are currently fourth in the Premier League table following Saturday’s 1-0 home with over Newcastle United.

And, on Wednesday the London club defeated last season’s UEFA Champions League semi-finalists Ajax 1-0 at Johan Cruyff Arena in Amsterdam.