Derby record remains intact as Danny Welbeck breaks one of his own and relief for Arsenal

We put it to you that this is the single most ‘Saturday 3pm’ set of Premier League fixtures of which it is possible to conceive, and here are the things that happened in them. We won’t judge you for skipping this final Saturday 3pm Blackout of the season.

Fulham 1-3 Everton: Toffees claim Iwobi Derby honours in most Saturday 3pm fixture imaginable

If you could design the most Saturday 3pm Premier League match, it would probably be Fulham vs Everton — and it would definitely be at Craven Cottage, not Goodison Park – perhaps the most ‘under the lights’ ground in Premier League history.

With all due respect, this fixture was destined for a 3pm Saturday afternoon slot and to be second-last on Match of the Day. All four games had similar energy, but this was the crème de la crème.

It was also saved for the last Saturday of Premier League action until 2025/26 as well, which is a nice touch.

The Alex Iwobi derby went the way of his former employers, despite Fulham taking the lead through a commanding Raul Jimenez header, assisted by a perfectly hung-up Emile Smith Rowe cross.

Jordan Pickford had no chance – though still more of one than Bernd Leno did for Vitalii Mykolenko’s goal, which took a huge deflection on its way in.

In a game with nothing riding on it, Everton took charge with goals from Michael Keane – checked and cleared by VAR for a potential foul – and Beto to claim all three points and go a point behind Crystal Palace.

There was a helping hand from Leno for Beto’s 74th-minute clincher – the hand being a very, very weak one that failed to parry away a tame shot. Having completely given up on their season and with Marco Silva in the stands, Fulham were uninspired against an Everton team who also have nothing to play for but at least had an element of pride-restoring having only won in their last three games.

A passive ‘on-the-beach’ Premier League fixture would be played at the Cottage, wouldn’t it? That’s what we got, and in May, we’re fine with it.

Ipswich 0-1 Brentford: VAR mischief gives a talking point at least

It really is a very Saturday 3pm set of games, this. You’d be forgiven for not even realising there was football on today. The sun’s shining and none of it really matters.

Not in the way that nothing in football really matters. No, we’re not talking in a ‘most important of the unimportant things’ fashion here.

These games didn’t even feel like the most important of the unimportant things. This was a day – spoiler alert for about 100 words’ time, by the way – where a Premier League Team actually Took To Twitter to flex that they weren’t in fact the worst Premier League team of all time.

That’s where we’ve got to. The big moment of this game between relegation’s Ipswich and upper-mid-table’s Brentford happened nice and early, with Jacob Greaves making the choice to rugby tackle Sepp van den Berg at a corner. Crucially, though, he did it before the corner was taken so although VAR had a look and we all had a giggle, no further action could be taken.

Then Brentford just scored from the corner anyway. Obviously. And then nobody else scored any more goals after that. Obviously.

We know opinion is divided on whether this season has been good or utterly dreadful, but we simply cannot ever recall a Premier League season just meandering aimlessly to its conclusion the way this one inevitably is. Tomorrow should be better, at least.

Southampton 0-0 Man City: Saints go marching past Derby’s all-time record in the most obvious way

Of course that’s how they did it. Of course it is. What other possible way could there be to saunter past that infamous all-time points record than be taking a point off the team that has dominated this league in recent years.

City may not have been so dominant this year, but when Southampton went down 2-0 at Leicester last week it did feel like their best and quite possibly final chance to avoid sharing ignominy with the Rams had slipped away from them.

Sorry if we got your hopes up, @dcfcofficial 😬 — Southampton FC (@SouthamptonFC) May 10, 2025

Not a bit of it. City could find no way through – having only beaten Southampton 1-0 at the Etihad as well – to leave themselves the unwanted punchline and leave a huge unexpected dent in all those ‘Arsenal finish third in a two-horse race’ ideas we’d all been busy concocting.

This was, inevitably, a story of City profligacy as much as Southampton grit. Twenty-six shots ought to be enough to win any game of football even if putting only five of them on target is a bit of a honker. By way of comparison, Spurs had ‘only’ 19 shots in the game when they came here and led 5-0 by half-time.

What really damns City’s performance, though, is who had their shots. Erling Haaland having only one attempt on goal feels like a tactical error. See also Phil Foden’s two. And at the other end of the scale the seven combined for City’s centre-backs.

That Omar Marmoush came closest to a late breakthrough, hitting the woodwork with one of the two attempts he managed as a late substitute, only highlights the oddness of a City performance that reeked of a team who suspected – not, it must be said, entirely without reason – that they needed only to turn up for this one to collect all three points. Ruben Dias was so perturbed by Southampton’s refusal to accept their role that he fell into the most obvious and embarrassing trap possible in these circumstances.

Wolves 0-2 Brighton: Welbeck breaks new ground at 34

With so little at stake in what’s left of this Premier League season, the Blackout will take its easy wins where it can find them and we thank Danny Welbeck for his service.

For today’s goal at Molineux marks a statistic that both makes perfect sense and yet has rattled our tiny minds into oblivion. It was Danny Welbeck’s 10th goal of the Premier League season and this is the first time that has ever happened.

Welbeck has never been a prolific goalscorer, but he’s been around forever. This was his 77th Premier League goal. It’s a pretty incredible number to have scored as an attacking player without ever getting to 10 in a single season.

But the real noodle-scratcher is not that this is the first time he’s even got close in over a decade. Since scoring nine in 2011/12 and 2013/14 for Manchester United, this is the first time Welbeck has even got past six Premier League goals. He’s had his injury problems, but six? Six goals? The fact he never once scored more than five Premier League goals in a single season for Arsenal? We’re in head falling clean off territory here.

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