Frank Lampard secured the win for Chelsea and Andre Villas-Boas in the crucial match against Sunderland on Saturday. Chelsea were coming into the match with a real need of three points in order to keep in touch with Tottenham.

Tottenham were kicking off at the same time as Chelsea, which meant that he not to close down the gap of eight points, Chelsea needed three points against an inform Sunderland team. With this in mind, Chelsea began the match extremely confidently and took the lead through Frank Lampard, who scored his third goal of 2012.

Frank Lampard and Fernando Torres were in the box for a cross from Mata. It was Fernando Torres, who tried to go for goal with an acrobatic volley. However, Fernando Torres, who hit the bar against Wolves recently, was once again desperately unlucky when his acrobatic effort rebounded off the crossbar. However, Chelsea were lucky in that the rebound dropped to Frank Lampard, who just had to tap it from around the two yards. It was a great start to the match and it eased the nerves around Stamford Bridge. Sunderland have taken points of Manchester City since the arrival of Martin O’Neill and they were coming on the back of five victories in their last seven matches.

“Sunderland created their opportunities and we, on the counter attack, created ours. Both teams had good opportunities and it could have gone 2-0 or 1-1. To break the run of form of Sunderland is good and with the other results it was a good three points. It was a good team performance,” Chelsea manager Andre Villas-Boas said after the match. He also said that it was good to see Fernando Torres back to form, as it was the best game of the season for the striker.