It's as you were at the top of the Premier League table, after both Liverpool and Manchester City picked up three points at home last night. Leaders Liverpool maintained their one-point advantage at the top with a 5-0 thrashing of a tame Watford side at Anfield, Sadio Mane and Virgil van Dijk both scoring twice. Pep Guardiola's side however kept up the pressure with a 1-0 win over West Ham, thanks to a second-half Sergio Aguero penalty. Elsewhere Manchester United defied a string of injuries to beat Crystal Palace 3-1 at Selhurst Park, Romelu Lukaku back in the goals with a first-half brace. It was United's eighth-consecutive away victory under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer - a club record. With their title challenge fading at Burnley last weekend Tottenham Hotspur are now being dragged into a battle for a place in the top four - they were beaten 2-0 by Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, with Blues manager Maurizio Sarri dropping Kepa Arrizabalaga after his side's now infamous League Cup final defeat to Man City. Meanwhile Arsenal were comfortable 5-1 winners over Bournemouth at the Emirates and Southampton moved out of the relegation zone with a 2-0 win over Fulham, who are 10 points adrift from safety.
In today's rugby statistics column John O'Sullivan has handed top marks to Wales on his Six Nations half-term report card, and has suggested the Championship leaders have benefited from their sequence of fixtures in this year's tournament. He writes: "Gatland made wholesale changes for the game against Italy, resting a host of frontline players, allowing him to work on a couple of fronts with one eye on the England game. . . In a World Cup year all six head coaches are juggling the twin focus of being competitive in the Six Nations and working through a long list of players who might make the 31-man squads for Japan."
Elsewhere Eamon Donoghue has spoken to Ireland and Leinster's Robbie Henshaw about how he balances rugby, his studies and a growing business - something which requires countless hours staring at a screen. "To give you a brief synopsis on what we do in Carton House - every team meeting that we have consists of video footage, every backs and forwards meeting we have consists of video footage," said Henshaw. "Each meeting will last between 30 minutes and one hour - and on average there would be two to three meetings per day. Especially Thursday and Friday."
The European Athletics Indoor Championships start tomorrow, and in her column today Sonia O'Sullivan suggests there will be plenty of speed on show in Glasgow, as indoor athletics continues to grow in popularity and quality. She writes: "The myth that running indoors is usually slower than outdoors is also being broken and now athletes are realising that it can actually be even faster to run indoors. The tracks are built for fast running: a standard 200m lap, banked at an angle that tends to sweep the athlete around the track. It can almost feel like you're a spinning top, once you reach the maximum effort you can maintain consistently, actually making it feel a little harder to slow down."
And in today's Women in Sport section, Joanne O'Riordan writes that this year's woman's football championship is shaping up to be the best yet: "Apart from the obvious contenders such as Cork and Dublin, you have the an infamous Mayo rebrand, the hills of Donegal coming alive, the sheer attacking fire Tipperary possess and Galway impressing game after game."
