Saturday clockwatch – as it happened

2.05pm: Good afternoon world! So, can anything live up to the excitement of the first hour of Newcastle v Chelsea? We live in hope. Here's what we've got to look forward to over the next three hours: • The following Premier League matches : Blackburn v Swansea Man City v Norwich QPR v West Brom Tottenham v Bolton Wigan v Arsenal • Tottenham playing at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon. The last time this happened, a full 32 weeks ago, it was 23 April and they drew 2-2 at home to West Brom. That's 32 weeks ago, diary fans. • It's top against bottom in the Championship as soaraway Southampton head to Doncaster, who have all sorts of injuries and suspensions to worry about, with two of their all-stars missing in El-Hadji Diouf and Pascal Chimbonda. If they slip up West Ham could go top by beating Burnley at Upton Park. • In the FA Cup second round, Stourbridge v Stevenage started at 2pm, but remains goalless. I'll have my beady eye on the look-out for upsets, perhaps at Chelmsford, where Macclesfield are the visitors. 2.17pm: Stat of the moment: In their last eight league games, Manchester United have scored nine goals. In his last eight league games, Robin van Persie has scored 12 goals. 2.18pm: If you've got a minute, you could read an interview with The Guardian's very own Barney Ronay at the European Football Weekends blog here . 2.27pm: Premier League teams are now dripping through. If you want to see the line-ups from another match, just ask... QPR: Cerny, Young, Gabbidon, Ferdinand, Traore, Mackie, Barton, Faurlin, Wright-Phillips, Bothroyd, Helguson. Subs: Putnins, Orr, Hill, Derry, Taarabt, Buzsaky, Smith. West Brom: Foster, Reid, Olsson, McAuley, Shorey, Thomas, Dorrans, Mulumbu, Morrison, Brunt, Long. Subs: Fulop, Tchoyi, Odemwingie, Dawson, Jones, Cox, Scharner. Referee: Martin Atkinson (W Yorkshire). 2.29pm: I can tell you that William Gallas makes his first league start of the season for Spurs, while Bolton bring in Dedryck Boyata for the suspended David Wheater. Full line-ups when I see them. 2.37pm: Here are the line-ups from the Etihad Stadium. It seems that Joleon Lescott, who started every one of City's first 13 league games, has been dropped: Man City: Hart, Richards, Kompany, Toure, Clichy, Silva, Toure Yaya, Barry, Nasri, Aguero, Dzeko. Subs: Pantilimon, Lescott, Milner, Johnson, Savic, De Jong, Balotelli. Norwich: Ruddy, Naughton, Martin, Barnett, Tierney, Bennett, Crofts, Johnson, Pilkington, Surman, Morison. Subs: Rudd, Whitbread, Holt, Jackson, Hoolahan, Fox, Wilbraham. Referee: Howard Webb (S Yorkshire). 2.42pm: Chelsea have beaten Newcastle 3-0. A brilliant first half, but Chelsea seemed to dominate the second. It all could have been different if David Luíz had been sent off in the third minute, which he should have been. Alan Pardew may mention that, I imagine. 2.46pm: Finally, the full line-ups from White Hart Lane: Tottenham: Friedel, Walker, Gallas, Kaboul, Assou-Ekotto, Lennon, Modric, Parker, Bale, Adebayor, Defoe. Subs: Cudicini, Pavlyuchenko, Van der Vaart, Bassong, Corluka, Livermore, Pienaar. Bolton: Jaaskelainen, Boyata, Cahill, Knight, Mark Davies, Eagles, Muamba, Reo-Coker, Robinson, Kevin Davies, Klasnic. Subs: Bogdan, Steinsson, Sanli, Petrov, Pratley, Ngog, Kakuta. Referee: Stuart Attwell (Warwickshire). 2.48pm: And this is how Arsenal line up at Wigan. And, indeed, how Wigan line up at Wigan: Wigan: Al Habsi, Stam, Gohouri, Caldwell, Figueroa, Diamé, Jones, Gomez, McCarthy, Moses, Sammon. Subs: Pollitt, Crusat, Watson, Di Santo, McArthur, Rodallega, Lopez. Arsenal: Szczesny, Koscielny, Mertesacker, Vermaelen, André Santos, Ramsey, Song, Arteta, Walcott, van Persie, Gervinho. Subs: Fabianski, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Djourou, Arshavin, Chamakh, Benayoun, Coquelin. Referee: Mark Clattenburg (Tyne & Wear). 2.50pm: And the final Premier League team-sheet is in: Blackburn: Robinson, Lowe, Samba, Dann, Givet, Rochina, Dunn, Pedersen, Hoilett, Formica, Yakubu. Subs: Bunn, Henley, Hanley, Petrovic, Vukcevic, Roberts, Goodwillie. Swansea: Vorm, Richards, Williams, Monk, Taylor, Gower, Dyer, Britton, Allen, Sinclair, Lita. Subs: Tremmel, Dobbie, Routledge, Moore, Bessone, Agustien, Moras. Referee: Chris Foy (Merseyside). 3pm: Peeep! We're off! 3.08pm: GOAL! Tottenham go 1-0 up at home to Bolton, Gareth Bale flicking in a corner and celebrating with a complicated left-boot-removing manoevre which I can only guess is Gary Speed-related. Tottenham 1 Bolton 0 3.10pm: "Gareth Bale has just run across his defender and tapped in at the near post for the kind of goal you see on Hackney Marshes," reports Gary Naylor, watching the Spurs game from his base in Georgia. "Bolton are going down aren't they?" Well things don't look very good for them right now, it has to be said. 3.12pm: In Manchester, meanwhile, Morison just burst through clear on goal but took a heavy touch and Hart got himself in the way. A very good chance for Norwich, that. 3.14pm: Apparently Alex and Nicolas Anelka have both had transfer request accepted by Chelsea, and are no longer training with the first-team squad. 3.16pm: So I'm "watching" Man City v Norwich, Tottenham v Bolton and Wigan v Arsenal. When I say "watching" what I mean is that they're all on, on a screen next to the one I'm having to look at while I type this, so I'm actually "watching" none of them in any way that most of you would understand it, just glancing at them occasionally. 3.18pm: Red card! Gary Cahill has been sent off for Bolton! And Sergio Agüero has missed a crazy chance for Manchester City. 3.21pm: A bizarre red card, that one. Cahill had the ball, about 10 yards inside his half. Scott Parker appeared from nowhere to steal it away, and Cahill tripped him. Never a red card in itself, and the offence took place about eight yards from the by-line, near the half-way line, so hardly a clear goalscoring opportunity. Don't know what was going through Stuart Attwell's little head there. 3.21pm: GOAL! Heidar Helguson has given QPR the lead at home to West Brom. I am loving his goalscoring run, I have to say. QPR 1 West Brom 0 3.23pm: GOAL! Yakubu has put Blackburn a goal up against Swansea. He's a striker's striker, he is. Goals in his boots. And probably a few snacks, just to see him through to half-time. Blackburn 1 Swansea 0 3.25pm: "He's incompetent and an egotist," says my fellow Spurs-game-watcher, Gary Naylor, of Attwell. Ouch. 3.27pm: Shaun Wright-Phillips has had a wonder-goal disallowed wrongly at Loftus Road. Chris Kamara is furious about it. It's the only top-flight game I'm not "watching" myself. Sorry, the screen only has four quarters. 3.30pm: GOAL! Arsenal work the ball nicely through midfield, and Arteta has a pop from a good 30 yards out. I've no idea what al-Habsi is playing at, but he takes an age to even dive and the ball thwacks into the very middle of the net – not high, nor low, not left, nor right. No idea how that went in. Wigan 0 Arsenal 1 3.31pm: GOAL! Arsenal are two up! Van Persie takes the corner, Vermaelen meets it at the back stick and his header sneaks just inside the post. Wigan 0 Arsenal 2! 3.34pm: GOAL! Manchester City break the deadlock against Norwich. Sergio Agüero seems totally surrounded by defenders and with nowhere to go, but he prods the ball goalwards with his right big toe and it goes through one defender's legs and trundles in at the back post. Man City 1 Norwich 0 3.35pm: Gareth Bale and Jermain Defoe are both on the floor at White Hart Lane, because Jaaskelainen has miraculously stopped both of them from scoring in the space of about two seconds. Still 1-0. 3.36pm: "I'm not a fan of continually banging on about individual referees," says David Hopkins, clearly about to leap to Stuart Attwell's defence, "but I do make an exception in the case of Stuart Attwell (what I like to call the Mike Reed Clause). How many clearly wrong decisions does he have to make to get dropped?" It looks like we'll never know, David. 3.37pm: GOAL! Swansea have equalised! They've been useless so far, but there's a cross from the right, Samba misjudges its flight and Leroy Lita wins the header and sends the ball back across the keeper and in at the far post. Smart header, that. Blackburn 1 Swansea 1 3.39pm: My tip for an FA Cup upset (scroll down to the bottom of the page if you don't believe me) is coming off so far: Chelmsford have just gone 1-0 up against Macclesfield, thanks to Max Cornhill's 35th-minute goal. 3.41pm: According to @InfostradaLive on Twitter, today is the 30th time that Yakubu has scored the opening goal in a Premier League game, and none of the previous 29 have ended in defeat for the striker's side. 3.44pm: Scott Parker has just blazed over the bar at White Hart Lane. It's been a veritable misschanceathon since Bale's early goal. 3.47pm: We're edging into stoppage time now. No goals for a while after a bit of a flurry a while back. Spurs have just come close (again), Bale's low cross just evading Defoe and Adebayor. 3.48pm: And Hoilett's missed a good late chance for Blackburn. The half-time whistle goes at Spurs, Man City, QPR and Wigan. 3.49pm: GOAL! Yakubu scores again in the second minute of stoppage time. An overhit corner, someone shoots towards the back post, and the ball would have flown several yards had it not hit Yakubu's forehead and rocketed into the net. Blackburn 2 Swansea 1 3.51pm: The half-time whistle goes at Ewood Park. There are no boos. There is, however, a very noisy tannoy rendition of Dario G's Carnaval de Paris. 3.54pm: Over in the Championship, West Ham and Southampton are both drawing 0-0, at home to Burnley and away at Doncaster respectively. 3.58pm: @OptaJoe on Twitter reports than Vermaelen's header ended at Arsenal run of 179 consecutive corners without a goal. 4.00pm: Unhappy news from Brazil, where Socrates is back in hospital and on life support, according to the Associated Press. "The Albert Einstein hospital in Sao Paulo says the 57-year-old Socrates is suffering from septic shock resulting from an intestinal infection," they report. We'll be launching a news story in a few minutes. 4.01pm: Just seen Blackburn's first goal for the first time. Lovely finish that from the Yak. Kean in! 4.02pm: I've also just seen highlights from Loftus Road. Lovely header from Helguson; the Wright-Phillips goal should have been allowed, and ruined what would have been an excellent bit of football, but was one of those close calls you've probably got to allow humans to get wrong from time to time. 4.03pm: Kick-off at Wigan, the first of the Premier League games to get back under way. 4.07pm: Terrible attacking mess-up by Norwich. Bennett ran through onto a bouncing through-ball, with the goalkeeper advancing. Surely he'd take a little touch and slot the ball into an empty net? Nope, he took a massive touch which took the ball wide and almost to the by-line, and his shot inevitably missed the target. 4.09pm: GOAL! Tottenham score a second at last, Aaron Lennon cutting in from the left and blasting home from 15 yards. Tottenham 2 Bolton 0 4.12pm: GOAL! Samir Nasri extends Manchester City's lead againt Norwich. It's a free-kick from 40-odd yards out which Nasri curls into the area. It's one of those difficult balls that, with players from both sides competing for the header, the keeper can't commit to. Except on this occasion no players from either side were competing for the header, which means Ruddy's refusal to dive until the final moment rather puzzling. Anyway, Manchester City 2 Norwich 0 4.13pm: "Clattenberg must have been upset by the attention on Attwell," notes Johnny Gooner. "How else did he not just give a penalty for that foul on Ramsay?" It's true, Arsenal should have had a penalty a few minutes back. Like Steve Clattenberg, though, I unaccountably ignored it. 4.17pm: West Ham have both scored and conceded a goal since half-time. 1-1 at Upton Park. 4.18pm: GOAL! Yakubu hat-trick! A corner from the left, Samba at the far post heads it back across goal and Yakubu is there unmarked to head home from about five yards out. Blackburn 3 Swansea 1 4.19pm: GOAL! Robin van Persie's shooting boots aren't working right today, but Al-Habsi can only push his shot out to Gervinho, who taps in. Wigan 0 Arsenal 3 4.20pm: GOAL! Anything Arsenal can do their neighbours can do equally well. It's Tottenham 3 Bolton 0 , and Jermain Defoe is the latest goalscorer. 4.22pm: "Has any player scored hat-tricks for more Premier League/Division One teams than Yakubu?" ponder Gary Naylor. I've got no idea. David Speedie? Anyone? 4.26pm: GOAL! Swansea are making a game of this. Routledge goes down the right, crosses too close to England's Paul Robinson but he just pushes the ball out to Luke Moore, who slams it home. Blackburn 3 Swansea 2 4.28pm: GOAL! It's all over at the Etihad. Yaya Touré with the latest. He's lurking 40 yards from goal as a short corner is taken, but nobody follows him as he ghosts into the area, is found with a pass and he opens up his body and curls the ball into the far corner. Too easy. Man City 3 Norwich 0 4.28pm: No goal! Shaun Wright-Phillips misses a totally open goal at QPR! 4.30pm: So Tottenham, Arsenal and Manchester City are all 3-0 up, and attention must now focus on Ewood Park, where another goal for Swansea would get the boo-boys going. 4.31pm: Mark Leadbeater reports that Dixie Dean scored 37 hat-tricks. That's an impressive total, but presumably they all came for Everton (in the top flight) or Tranmere (in the Second Division North, I'm guessing). He was good, but he was no Yakubu, not when it comes to quantity of top-two-division clubbage. 4.34pm: Sam Vokes makes it West Ham 1 Burnley 2 at Upton Park. Southampton also losing. 4.36pm: GOAL! Theo Walcott races through down the inside right channel, Van Persie loiters centrally hopeful of a cut-back. Cut-back. Goal. Wigan 0 Arsenal 4 4.38pm: Arsenal bring Coquelin and Arshavin and Benayoun on for Walcott and Song and someone else [this turned out to be Gervinho - ed]. They can relax and enjoy the last 10 minutes of a routine win. 4.39pm: "Robin Van Persie has scored or assisted 40 Premier League goals in 2011," reports @OptaJoe on Twitter. "That's 14 more than any other player in the division." 4.40pm: GOAL! Steve Morison gets Norwich's regulation late goal with a back-post header. Manchester 3 Norwich 1 4.41pm: Swansea go down to 10 men, after Yakubu is tugged back as he attempted to lead a break. Second yellow. And then Blackburn keep attacking and win a penalty, which Yakubu will take. GOAL! Yakubu scores his and Blackburn's fourth goal, sending the keeper the wrong way. Blackburn 4 Swansea 2 4.44pm: "I'm not sure that it was ever true that every team can beat every other team in the Premier League," writes Gary Naylor. "but it's certainly not true any more, as today's results illustrate." Three utterly regulation wins for the top-six sides this afternoon, though Chelsea had to ride their luck a bit at lunchtime (albeit against a decent Newcastle side). 4.45pm: The Swansea player who got sent off was Joe Allen, by the way. 4.48pm: GOAL! Balotelli, who came on for Agüero about 10 minutes ago, benefits from Adam Johnson's lovely and totally unselfish little pass to restore Manchester City's three-goal lead. Cue traditional sulky "celebration". Man City 4 Norwich 1 4.50pm: The final whistles start to blow. The first is at Wigan, where Arsenal have won 4-0. GOAL! Adam Johnson has a shot this time, and it's a darn fine one, skipping along the ground, left-footed from 15-odd yards. Lovely, easy finish, but it all came from a Norwich player on the other flank pretending to be Garrincha when he should have just put the ball into touch. Idiot defending that. Man City 5 Norwich 1 4.53pm: I totally missed West Brom scoring, through Shane Long, in the 81st minute of their match at QPR, which has now ended 1-1. Sorry! 4.55pm: It's all over everywhere now, and the headlines are: BONG! All the good teams win really easily! BONG! Yakubu scores four as Blackburn actually win! BONG! Wigan go bottom after getting hammered at home by Arsenal! BONG! The two top teams in the Championship both lose! BONG! The team I support also win, in unlikely style. I am cheered! BONG! Non-league but high-flying Wrexham beat Brentford to storm into the FA Cup third round! 5.01pm: That's all for me, then. Why don't you check out the full results here , the top-flight table here , or follow Aston Villa v Manchester United with Scott Murray here . Have a great rest-of-weekend. Bye! 5.02pm: Oooh, a late-breaking interesting email: "Something to make Mr Attwell envious at Kenilworth Road today," writes Richard Woods. "Mr Webster booked the Cheltenham player Alan Bennett, who with Daryl Duffy in close attendance had fouled a Luton player. Then a minute later he booked Daryl Duffy. He then gave Duffy a second yellow and sent him off, presumably thinking he was Alan Bennett. Come on Stuart – top that." Did that really happen? Did it, Mr Webster? Well?