Liverpool adds to Villa's woes

Liverpool's Jordan Henderson (second left) scores past Aston Villa keeper Brad Guzan during their English Premier League match in Birmingham yesterday. Inset: Sunderland manager Martin O'Neill was sacked on Saturday.

Jordan Henderson and Steven Gerrard struck second-half goals for Liverpool which increased Aston Villa's Premier League relegation fears after rallying from a goal down to secure a 2-1 away victory yesterday.

Belgium striker Christian Benteke, with his 14th league goal of the season, fired Villa into a first-half lead but the game changed in the first 15 minutes of the second half.

Henderson equalized on 47 minutes and Gerrard fired home a penalty on the hour after Luis Suarez tumbled in the area under a challenge from Nathan Baker.

Liverpool is five points behind fifth-place Arsenal.

Villa drops below Wigan into the relegation zone with seven games to play.

On Saturday, Sunderland's Titus Bramble's own goal earned Manchester United an English-record 25th win from 30 league games and kept the team 15 points clear of reigning champion Manchester City, which thrashed Newcastle 4-0 to tighten its grip on second place.

Spurs leapfrogged Chelsea into third place thanks to a 2-1 victory at Swansea, while Chelsea flopped 1-2 at Southampton. Fifth-place Arsenal moved just two points behind Chelsea in the battle for a top-four place by beating Reading 4-1.

Everton beat Stoke 1-0 courtesy of a wonderful solo goal by Kevin Mirallas to stay sixth.

Meanwhile, Sunderland became the fourth relegation-haunted club to fire its manager in barely four months when Martin O'Neill's 15-month spell came to an end late on Saturday.

Queens Park Rangers, Southampton and Reading have changed their managers since the end of November, with owners clearly nervous about the prospect of missing out on a windfall of at least 60 million pounds (US$91 million) of TV money in each of the next three seasons. The Premier League last year struck a mighty 3 billion pound deal for domestic TV rights between 2013-16, a 70 percent increase on the previous contract, while overseas TV income for the same period is likely to surge past 2 billion pounds.

"As a whole, they've struggled this season," former Sunderland player Kevin Kilbane said. "Now they've made the change and you've got to respect the owners for doing that, but I don't think it's the right decision to make.

"I think they should have continued with Martin O'Neill until the end of the season and tried to establish themselves in the Premier League, but this puts everything back up in the air again."

The agent of Steve McClaren ruled out the former England manager for the job, saying Sunderland already had a replacement lined up.

British media said former Chelsea manager Roberto Di Matteo, ex-QPR boss Mark Hughes and Paolo di Canio are among the favorites to land the Sunderland job.