Craig Bellamy rescued a point for Manchester City during an intense match at Villa Park on Monday night. Two teams that are fighting to break into the top four went head to head and the match did not disappoint as Villa got ahead quickly before the Welshman levelled the score.

It was a good performance from Aston Villa who have been struggling to get some consistency in the early stages of the Premier League season. Richard Dunne put Villa ahead and refused to celebrate against the club that made his name.

However, it was not enough as Bellamy cracked in a spectacular goal in the later stages of the game to get his side a point. City carry their momentum forwards but would have liked to take all three points and some good away form.

Mark Hughes, City boss, said: “That was really special. The City fans were fantastic in terms of the reception they gave Richard Dunne. He was a fantastic player for City, in good times and bad, and our fans acknowledged that.”

Dunne himself added: “It’s amazing how these things happen. I don’t have a celebration. If I score, it’s very surprising. I enjoyed my time at City and respect everyone there so I just thought it was the right thing to do. I think we have got as good a chance as they have of getting into the top four.”

Villa’s , seemed a little frustrated by only taking a point away from the match, a match that he felt his side should have won. He said: “My opinion of Gareth Barry hasn’t changed in three years. He’s a very fine footballer.”

For City the next step is very clear. They need to carry this momentum on that they have started to build up. They are looking like a more complete football club with every match that passes and sooner rather than later, the consistency will come off and they will win something. It just won’t happen for a little time yet.

For Villa, they just need to keep working hard. Villa is a club that is based around all of the good things that football should be about. If they are to refind the ground they lost when they were a possible top four club then they need to give the manager time and space as well as a number of the players. It will be interesting to see how their seasons pan out.

Former Premier League referee, Jeff Winter, has said that Sir Alex Ferguson over stepped the mark with his comments on Alan Wiley. Ferguson implied that Wiley was unfit and not up to the standard of refereeing during Manchester United’s 2-2 draw with Sunderland.

Winter himself was once part of the referee’s club that had to put up with verbal bashings from the likes of Ferguson on a daily basis and he says that this time the big Scotsman was out of order.

He said: “I think Sir Alex may have overstepped the line this time and he may be about to get his comeuppance. I think referees will be so incensed about this that Sir Alex may find that United no longer get the benefit of the doubt on certain decisions.”

“Every game Alan Wiley takes charge of now where he makes a decision which upsets some fans is going to result in chants of ‘You’re not fit to referee’, he’s going to be known as the ‘unfit ref’. Sir Alex won’t care though. He’s a knight of the realm and he thinks he’s untouchable, bullet proof.”

“But he’s also a bully. He spoke at Sir Bobby Robson’s memorial service a couple of weeks ago and said he’d learnt a lot from Sir Bobby. But he hadn’t, they were totally different, Sir Bobby was a gentleman. He was humble and had respect for people.”

“I’ve trained with the guy and I know just how fit and professional he is. He’s 49 now but he’s still extremely fit. If he wasn’t he wouldn’t be getting a game, simple as that. Referees don’t just have an annual fitness test which is pretty tough but they are continually assessed and re-assessed.”

Winter may have a point in relation to the age of Wiley. Referees in England tend to get a longer lease of life than the rest of those across Europe. The referees in Spain, Germany, Italy and other countries all have to be younger and pass sterner fitness tests in order to qualify. The fact that Wiley is still going at 49 is remarkable and is something that should be admired.

It is unlikely that Ferguson would have made the comments were he happy with the way his side had played at the weekend and the FA will no doubt send him some form of warning sooner rather than later for his outburst.

Liverpool defender, Jamie Carragher, has said that Liverpool should not let their heads drop just yet. The defender says that the week Liverpool have after the international break is likely to be decisive in how the rest of the club’s season pans out.

Carragher is a Liverpool legend and has been a regular first team player over the last few seasons. He is one of those players that defines the club he is at and he has been in many of the situations that Liverpool are in before.

He said: “It’s never nice to lose before an international break, particularly a game as big as this [against Chelsea], but we have got to put it behind us. It would have been good to send the international lads away with a bit of a buzz, but it wasn’t to be and now it’s a case of putting it behind us.”

“When we get back to it, we have got a massive week coming up with those games against Sunderland, United and Lyons. But every week you have as a Liverpool player is massive and we know we’ll have to be at our best to get going again at Sunderland as they are in good form.”

“Games against Chelsea are notoriously tight and a bit of quality or a mistake is always going to be the thing that turns it one way or another. But we have lost the ball in midfield for their first and I felt myself that I should have done a bit better for their second one.”

“I thought we played quite well and did all right for most of the game, yet we have still come away with a 2-0 defeat. It’s the small details that are so important at this level and we know that there are certain areas we have got to improve. There’s a gap at the top and we’ve got to close it.”

The point is that the very factor that keeps Liverpool apart from the big clubs on such a regular basis is consistency. They simply do not have it. If they were able to beat the big teams every single week then the club would have won another championship by now.

Also they are missing one or two players. There is too much pressure on specific areas of the team and this makes them vulnerable. If these areas do not fire then it makes it impossible for the club to win games as they cannot adapt.

Rafa Benitez is trying to stay upbeat about Liverpool’s title chances, despite the 2-0 defeat at the hands of Chelsea yesterday. Goals from Nicholas Anelka and Florent Malouda were enough to put Chelsea right back into the driving seat after Manchester United’s draw with Sunderland.

Liverpool were also soundly beaten in a Champions League match against Fiorentina during the week, a match that Benitez said was one of the worst performances that he had ever seen from his side.

Liverpool will need to buck up their ideas very quickly or it will probably end up being just another dull and boring season that will not play to the ambitions and expectations of the average Reds fan.

Benitez said: “We must stay calm. We will see what happens in March and April. I think you will see all the top sides losing more points against the other teams. It’s good for the Premier League, good for the competition, and it just means we have to try to win more games.”

“I think the performance wasn’t bad. We were against a very good team. The end of the championship is a big distance away. Manchester United’s result [a 2-2 draw at home to Sunderland on Saturday] was a surprise, but we want to stay concentrated on our season, not on the season of other teams.”

Benitez seems to be quickly running out of patience with his side and could wield the axe of rotation all over again ahead of Liverpool’s next game. The problem for them is finding the consistency that will help them move forward and be able to challenge for the title all season long.

The point is that Liverpool do have it in them to compete but what they don’t seem able to do is compete regularly and make good of their best form. Once they find the consistency then they will be amazing.

The other factor is that the club look one or two players short. Fernando Torres does not have a world class partner in attack, too much pressure is put onto Steven Gerrard and the defence needs an extra world class player to hold the side together.

Once all of these things have been found then Liverpool will be fine. January can’t come quick enough at the moment but the message is already clear that the team will not be able to reach the top level of competition this season.

Sir Alex Ferguson is likely to be charged after his rant about the fitness of referees at the weekend. Speaking after the 2-2 draw with Sunderland, Ferguson said that the fitness of referee, Alan Wiley, was appalling.

Ferguson is not shy of making a few comments about referees, especially when his side have just come off the back of a bad performance. Ferguson makes a good point that the fitness of referees in the rest of Europe is a lot higher than those in England but the Football Association will still invite him into the office to explain his comments.

He said: “He didn’t add any time on for the goal we scored. There were only four minutes and two seconds’ injury time. There should have been another 30 seconds, but he was actually walking up the pitch after the goal, needing a rest. He just wasn’t fit enough for a game of that stature.”

“The fitness of both sets of players, the pace of the game, demanded a referee who was fit. He’s not fit. It’s an indictment of our game that we see referees from abroad are fit as butchers’ dogs. We’ve got some good referees in our country who are fit, but he wasn’t. He was taking 30 seconds to book a player as he was taking a rest.”

The FA are unlikely to take the comments with a pinch of salt because they are very good at protecting referees in the Premier League. Ferguson was probably a little annoyed that his side had played badly and could not get another three points on their title hunt this season.

Had they won the game then the obvious thing to say would be that the Scotsman would not have said a thing about the referee. However, when you draw a game you want to win or lose a game you need to draw then it is very easy to start looking for excuses.

The FA have said: “The fitness of select group match officials is continually assessed throughout the season to ensure it is of the highest possible standard.”

The point is that in recent years officials in other high profile European games have been a lot fitter and have been able to get a lot of decisions right. Maybe the situation in England needs to be reviewed but for now the FA seem happy with things the way they are.

Fabio Aurelio says that he thought he had seen most things during his time at Liverpool, but he was not prepared for the Benitez backlash following the 2-0 defeat against Fiorentina.

Benitez does not appear to be a manager that gets easily annoyed but the performance of his side the other night would have been enough to make even the most modest of managers completely lose the plot.

Aurelio said: “I think that was the most annoyed we have seen the manager, but we were all annoyed. We all felt like that after the first half and I think that’s why you saw a better performance in the second. But we didn’t need harsh words at half-time. We all knew that we were not playing well and that we had to be much better.”

“In the second half we controlled more of it at last and we created chances that normally we would have taken. We just couldn’t find a way to play against them in the first half, and they were finding a lot of space. They were controlling the ball and we couldn’t come up with any way to stop them.”

“It was so unlike Liverpool. In the second half we were a different side and if it had been like that from the start, it could have been a different result. We can’t think about that now, though, just how we will manage it again if we have the same situation in the future.”

“In football you always have a chance to put it right and turn things to your favour and ours comes at Chelsea on Sunday. It’s a good opportunity for us to get over the disappointment of losing in Florence.”

“It is a very important game in the Premier League, against a very strong side, and we have to recover from this result straight away and have the confidence we can do a good job again.”

Liverpool look as though they are going to be this season’s frustrating team to watch. Brilliant at one second but terrible the next. There is no secret plan to uncover, all the team has to do is find the form that saw them completely smash Hull City to bits and play like that in every single game.

Europe is a different league to the Premier League but Benitez has won this cup and will do every thing he can to make sure his side don’t slip up again.

Chelsea manager, Carlo Ancelotti, has let rip on his team after an unconvincing win over Apoel last night. Chelsea got their noses in front early but failed to increase their 1-0 advantage, regardless of the fact that they had a number of good chances.

Ancelotti said: “I wanted Chelsea to play better and to take more control, to play with courage. But I think that at this stage of the season it’s normal. We have to change. They ran a lot, but we have to play better.”

“It wasn’t a good performance. We started with good control, scored a goal, and we had opportunities to do quick counter-attacks after that, but we didn’t do that.”

“In the second half it was different. We tried to control the game with possession, but we made a lot of mistakes. Nicosia played very well in the second half and deserved to draw the game.”

Captain, John Terry, speaking ahead of the next Premier League match with Liverpool, added: “We have to be better. They are a very good side who had a tough result yesterday [a 2-0 defeat away to Fiorentina]. They will be up for it and they are a big club so we will have to respond again when we play them.”

“Ideally you want to play well and win. We haven’t been at our best tonight, but there were times when we passed it well and we came away with three points, so you can’t ask for more.”

The weak performance is being used by Chelsea critics as evidence over why they will never be able to win the Champions League under the current management and structure.

They need to be stamping their authority all over games and teams such as this because when they come up against a better side they will not be allowed to get away with it.

The frustrations last night were clear as Terry himself got involved with a player right at the end of the game but the point is that a win is a win. Chelsea can take another three points away with them and they should be satisified that they are looking good for qualification.

There is time and space to get some hard work done ahead of tougher and more important games but for now the focus should switch to beating Liverpool this coming weekend in the Premier League, where they have just seen their lead slip.