Chelsea 3 Birmingham 1

Birmingham's game in hand on their relegation rivals ended in defeat as Chelsea moved into second place.

Blues were brushed aside at Stamford Bridge as two goals from Florent Maluoda, either side of Salomon Kalou's strike, saw Chelsea go three up before Sebastian Larsson's reply from the penalty spot.

A two-goal win for Chelsea takes them ahead of Arsenal in the Premier League table, while Blues are now level on matches with nearly all of the bottom six, bar bottom club Wolves who have a game in hand.

But Alex McLeish's men still have a five-point cushion on the drop zone.

They gave themselves a mountain to climb at Chelsea after going two goals down in 26 minutes, starting with Malouda's opener with just 162 seconds on the clock.

The France international connected with Paulo Ferreira's right-wing cross to shoot into the roof of the net from three yards.

A moment of magic from Kalou extended Chelsea's lead, a mazy run evading defenders Roger Johnson and Stuart Parnaby before his 20-yard drive clipped the inside of the post on its way in.

The game was over when the home side grabbed a third after the break, again through Malouda on 62 minutes.

The Chelsea attacker got away from his marker Liam Ridgewell at the near post, leaving himself plenty of time to head substitute Ryan Bertrand's cross past goalkeeper Ben Foster.

On came Fernando Torres for Kalou but, again, the £50million striker failed to score his first goal for the hosts, with his drought now standing at nearly 900 minutes.

And Blues did eventually grab a consolation through Larsson's spot kick with 14 minutes to go, given for David Luiz's needless foul on Matt Derbyshire as both went up for a header.

The Sweden international duly drilled his penalty into the top corner.