LONDON: Eden Hazard took his tally of goals for Chelsea into three figures, scoring twice in a 2-1 win at Watford as the Blues remained fourth, 11 points behind Liverpool, while Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang netted his 13th league goal but fifth-placed Arsenal could only manage a 1-1 draw at Brighton & Hove Albion in the late games of the Premier League’s Boxing Day programme.

Aubameyang moved back ahead of Mohammed Salah and Harry Kane in the race for the golden boot to hand Arsenal an early lead at Brighton, but Jurgen Locadia pounced on a poor defensive header by Stephan Lichtsteiner to level just before half-time.

Chelsea are two points ahead of the Gunners as they bounced back from a home defeat against Leicester City after Hazard scored either side of half time, his second from the spot, for his 100th and 101st goals for the club to beat a spirited Watford at Vicarage Road.

“100th and 101st goals with this amazing club is something I will never forget,” said the Belgian. “I want to score more goals for this club and be a legend like [Frank] Lampard, [John] Terry or [Didier] Drogba.”

Watford had won two straight, but with the setback slipped to ninth in the table with 27 points.

The match, however, was overshadowed by the injury suffered by Watford defender Christian Kabasele, who crashed into a goalpost early in the game.

Despite appearing to suffer a rib injury in the collision, he tried to continue but ended up being carried out of the ground on a stretcher while being given oxygen.

Two of the three goals came in first-half stoppage time as Hazard’s opener was quickly cancelled out by Roberto Pereyra’s spectacular strike.

However, Hazard made sure he was the match-winner as he was brought down by Ben Foster and then converted the resulting spot-kick early in the second half to move Chelsea two points ahead of Arsenal in the battle for Champions League qualification.

Brighton arrested a run of three straight defeats after a long ball up the field came off the head of Lichtsteiner and fell to Locadia who had sprinted up the pitch and did well to poke it past Arsenal goalkeeper Bernd Leno 10 minutes before the interval at the Amex Stadium.

Arsenal took the lead after seven minutes, Aubameyang producing a fine side-foot finish wide in the box but the draw means they have won only once in their last four games in all competitions, a frustrating sequence that started when their 22-match unbeaten run ended at Southampton on December 16.

Published in Dawn, December 28th, 2018