Match reviews

Schalke 3-1 Borussia Monchengladbach

Two first half goals from Halil Altintop allowed Schalke to beat neighbours Borussia Monchengladbach 3-1 at the Veltins Arena on Saturday. The win ends Schalke’s two game losing streak and comes at an important time, just before their European clash against Manchester City on Thursday.

Altintop opened the scoring in the seventeenth minute, sending a right footed shot into the bottom left corner of Gladbach keeper Uwe Gospodarek. Five minutes later, Tobias Levels fouled Jefferson Farfan in the box, and the Peruvian international duly converted the resulting penalty to put the Royal Blues 2-0 ahead. Rob Friend reduced the margin for Gladbach on 30 minutes, but Altintop added one more on the stroke of half time to put Schalke into a comfortable 3-1 lead.

Gladbach had drawn with Bayern Munich last week.

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Liverpool 0-0 Fulham

On a poor day for the Premiership’s big four, Rafa Benitez’s Liverpool were held to a goalless draw at Anfield by Fulham, who, prior to this game, had picked up just one point from their trips away from Craven Cottage this season. But because Chelsea and Manchester United had similar results against Newcastle and Aston Villa respectively, Liverpool are still on the same number of points as the Blues.

Fernando Torres started for Liverpool, and was easily their best attacking player of the afternoon. Robbie Keane looked short on confidence, and neither Dirk Kuyt nor Albert Riera were at their best as Liverpool desperately looked for a way to break Fulham down. With skipper Steven Gerrard out of the squad with an injury, Liverpool were unable to deliver the killing blow to Roy Hodgson’s side, for whom a stalemate was as good as a win.

Torres was easily Liverpool's best player on show ( Photo : Philip Gabrielsen)
Torres was easily Liverpool's best player on show ( Photo : Philip Gabrielsen)

With Gerrard unavailable Benitez surprised one and all by starting with Lucas Leiva, and relegating in form Xabi Alonso to the bench. The Reds started off fairly well, although there were plenty of misplaced passes floating around. The best chance of the first half fell to Robbie Keane after Fabio Aurelio’s ball had taken deflections off both Torres and Jimmy Bullard, but Australian keeper Mark Schwarzer did well to get his face in the way. In his Spurs days, you would have probably seen Keane loft it over the keeper rather than smash it into this face.

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Spartak Moscow 1-2 Udinese- UEFA Group D

A brace from Fabio Quagliarella helped Udinese beat Spartak Moscow 2-1 at the Luzhniki Stadium on Thursday night. Playing their first game against Russian opposition, Pasquale Marino’s side got the result they wanted, are currently lead group D with six points from two games. They had beaten Tottenham Hotspur 2-0 in their first game.

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