Leeds v Brighton, West Ham v Burnley and Football League – clockwatch live!

It’s half time at the London Stadium, where West Ham take a 1-0 lead over Burnley into the break. Brighton are 60 seconds from doing similar in Leeds.

Stoke have only won one of their last nine in all competitions, and that was against Blackburn last month. Today they play Blackburn again, and they’re winning again: Nick Powell has just headed in from six yards.

West Ham hit the post! It’s a corner from the right, which is played in by Bowen, flicked on, and then hammered against the far post by Ogbonna!

Burnley have a goal disallowed! It’s a low cross from Wood on the left, which flicks off the back of Cresswell’s trailing leg at the near post and loops in at the far, but Wood was offside in the build-up.

More good news for Norwich: Bournemouth are a man down at home to Luton, after Jefferson Lerma was sent off (apparently very harshly). It could have been better still, but Watford’s Troy Deeney has not been sent off when he might have been.

This just in from Turkey, where the game between Istanbul Basaksehir and Sivasspor turned into a game of spot the footballer. Not ideal conditions for an all-white kit:

Brighton hit the bar! It’s a deflected cross, but Casilla is helpless as it crashes against the meat of the woodwork and away!

Norwich are two up! The not-quite-runaway-but-getting-there (walkquicklyaway?) Championship leaders double their lead against Cardiff as Todd Cantwell snaffles the rebound after Jordan Hugill’s shot is saved.

Maupay stays on his feet this time, and is left with the easiest of finishes when Mac Allister draws the keeper before setting him up with low square pass!

Bristol City are a goal up at home to Preston, Famara Diedhiou nodding in a corner with what we generally call aplomb. At Elland Road Maupay goes down in the area, but it’s a horrible dive and the referee does not reward it (or punish it, for some reason).

A fine Fornals cross from the left is misjudged by Tarkowski and finds Antonio in all sorts of space at the far post, and he makes no mistake from a couple of yards!

Chance for Leeds! It’s a low cross from the left and Rodrigo only needs to touch it in as he runs onto the ball five yards out, but with a defender diving in to distract him he misses it completely!

Norwich are the first team in the English Football League to score this afternoon, Grant Hanley heading in from a couple of feet after a corner is flicked on at the near post.

Less than a minute played and the Burnley physios are already on the pitch, helping Josh Brownhill to his feet after a collision with Declan Rice.

Here’s Paul Doyle’s report on Wolves 2-3 West Brom:

Six matches after being parachuted in to save West Brom, Sam Allardyce can at last say he has presided over a victory – and a particularly sweet one, at that. Matheus Pereira scored two penalties either side of a headed goal by Semi Ajayi as West Brom upset their local rivals with a display of opportunism, spirit and relative defensive rigour. Wolves, though, should mostly blame themselves. They have lost six of their last nine league matches and look no closer to solving problems at both ends of the pitch.

For nine years Wolves had waited for a chance to avenge their defeat in the last Black Country derby, a 5-1 clobbering that convinced the club to oust their then manager, Mick McCarthy. West Brom have already jettisoned one manager this season and the replacement arrived at Molineux looking for a victory to kickstart his rescue mission.

Much more here:

“Afternoon Simon,” writes our occasional voluntary Scottish football correspondent Simon McMahon. “ Scottish Leagues One and Two were suspended earlier in the week, but still some games taking place in the top two divisions, for now anyway. Crisis club Celtic are at home to high-flying Livingston, while Micky Mellon’s Dundee United travel to Hamilton (and if anyone hasn’t seen Lawrence Shankland’s goal for United against St Johnstone during midweek, they really should). In the Scottish Championship, leaders Hearts are at Alloa, and struggling Dundee host Ayr (though there’s a doubt about that one as, after recent snow and rain, part of the pitch at Dens resembles a ploughed field*). *Insert your own joke about 1970’s industrial style football.”

Sadly as Simon was pressing send on his email, Dundee were making the following announcement:

Sunderland have won one and lost one league game in a drawful last two months, but Charlie Wyke has just completed his hat-trick to give them a 3-0 lead in the last minute at Wimbledon, so there’ll be three more points in the bank this evening.

Sean Dyche has named an unchanged team to face West Ham today. He has a chat on the telly:

We’ve got a good belief. The performance level against Man Utd was really good, that’s why we’re sticking with the same side. Other players [he mentions Dwight McNeil] are close to fitness, and our squad strength is improving all the time.

On doing the double over West Ham last season:

When you win it’s always good memories. We were decent both games, and the last couple of seasons we’ve done well here. There seems a more solid feel about West Ham at the moment. Maybe not as free flowing but still a good side, we know that. We’re never far away defensively but our production in the front third has got to improve.

Dortmund’s match against Mainz kicked off 10 minutes or so ago, their players having warmed up in special jerseys encouraging Axel Witsel, nicknamed Chaloupe (“Chaloupe is my nickname. They gave it to me when I was playing for Standard Lièege because I am always… A Chaloupe is a small wooden boat, which always moves very slowly on the water. That is how I am every day: cool, relaxed, not stressed. That’s why they called me that years ago and I’m still like that today.”), to recover quickly from his torn achilles tendon.

Erling Haaland had the ball in the net within 90 seconds of kick-off, but the goal was disallowed for handball.

A few photographers are trying their very best to produce interesting pre-match images on a day when drab slate-grey skies make such a task rather difficult. Here’s a puddle of the day:

West Brom lead Wolves 3-2 with 10 minutes to play, and Scott Murray is all over this one:

Meanwhile at Elland Road, the names on the team sheets are these:

Leeds: Casilla, Dallas, Ayling, Cooper, Alioski, Struijk, Raphinha, Rodrigo, Klich, Harrison, Bamford. Subs: Poveda-Ocampo, Roberts, Llorente, Helder Costa, Hernandez,
Davis, Caprile, Shackleton, Jenkins.
Brighton: Sanchez, Webster, Dunk, Burn, Veltman, White, Gross, March, Mac Allister, Maupay, Trossard. Subs: Bissouma, Alzate, Tau, Propper, Zeqiri, Walton, Sanders, Khadra, Jenks.
Referee: Kevin Friend.

Lining up at the London Stadium will be this lot:

West Ham: Fabianski, Coufal, Dawson, Ogbonna, Cresswell, Rice, Soucek, Bowen, Benrahma, Fornals, Antonio. Subs: Alves, Yarmolenko, Lanzini, Noble, Diop, Fredericks, Johnson, Randolph, Odubeko.
Burnley: Pope, Lowton, Tarkowski, Mee, Pieters, Gudmundsson, Westwood, Brownhill, Brady, Wood, Barnes. Subs: Cork, McNeil, Stephens, Rodriguez, Norris, Bardsley, Vydra, Long, Benson.
Referee: Chris Kavanagh.

Saturday afternoon is once again upon us, and with it the weekly game glut. Here, then, is your big fixture check. A few stand out: outside the Premier League there are big games at the top and bottom of the Championship, with this evening’s Barnsley v Swansea match seeing two of the division’s form teams play each other, while Wayne Rooney’s first match as a full-time manager sees his Derby side, 22^nd in the league, host the team immediately below them, Rotherham (who have two games in hand). The leaders of Leagues One and Two are both out of action because of postponements, and in their absence the big games in both divisions are towards the bottom: in League One 23^rd-place Wigan visit Rochdale, three places but only two points ahead of them, while in League Two four of the bottom five play each other, with Scunthorpe hoping to pull themselves clear of the relegation scrap with victory at Barrow and the bottom two, Grimsby and Southend, meeting at Blundell Park.

Today’s fixtures (3pm kick-offs unless stated):

Premier League

Fulham v Chelsea (5.30pm)
Leeds v Brighton
Leicester v Southampton (8pm)
West Ham v Burnley
Wolverhampton v West Brom (12.30pm)

Sky Bet Championship

Bournemouth v Luton
Barnsley v Swansea (7.45pm)
Blackburn v Stoke
Bristol City v Preston North End
Cardiff v Norwich
Derby v Rotherham
Middlesbrough v Birmingham (12.30pm)
Nottm Forest v Millwall
QPR v Wycombe (postponed because of a Covid outbreak at Wycombe)
Reading v Brentford (postponed because of a Covid outbreak at Brentford)
Watford v Huddersfield

Sky Bet League One

Wimbledon v Sunderland (1pm)
Accrington Stanley v Gillingham
Bristol Rovers v Charlton
Burton Albion v Ipswich
Fleetwood Town v Portsmouth
Hull v Blackpool
Northampton v Oxford Utd
Peterborough v Milton Keynes Dons
Plymouth v Crewe
Rochdale v Wigan
Shrewsbury v Lincoln City (postponed because of a Covid outbreak at Shrewsbury)
Swindon v Doncaster

Sky Bet League Two

Barrow v Scunthorpe
Bolton v Cheltenham
Bradford v Crawley Town
Colchester v Cambridge Utd
Forest Green v Port Vale
Grimsby v Southend
Harrogate Town v Exeter
Leyton Orient v Morecambe
Mansfield v Carlisle (postponed because of a Covid outbreak at Carlisle)
Newport County v Salford City
Stevenage v Tranmere
Walsall v Oldham

Scottish Premiership

Celtic v Livingston
Hamilton v Dundee Utd
Hibernian v Kilmarnock
Ross County v Aberdeen
St Johnstone v St Mirren