Best Saturday ever? A 109th-minute winner, 11 braces, 5 hat-tricks and a five-for – plus MK UP, Oxford DOWN and Wimbledon & Burton SAFE
What a feast - there were 121 goals across penultimate weekend.
Championship
⚽ SCORES
Birmingham 2-1 Bristol City
Charlton 2-1 Hull
Coventry 3-1 Wrexham
Leicester 1-1 Millwall
Middlesbrough 5-1 Watford
Norwich 1-1 Swansea
Oxford 4-1 Sheffield Wed
QPR 2-3 Derby
Sheffield Utd 2-3 Preston
Stoke 1-3 Portsmouth
West Brom 0-0 Ipswich
✍️ BIG STORIES
Sam Parry
Here endeth the relegation battle. Veni, veni, veni; nunc descendo. Don’t stick that in a Latin translator.
When it came, the end for Oxford was taken out of their hands by events at The Valley, whose ‘Shadow of Death’ I’ll come to. At 3pm, the Yellows bottled a bit of lightning in beating bottom-three bedfellows Sheffield Wednesday 4-1.
The highlights were two very different and utterly brilliant Will Lankshear strikes. Obviously, those didn’t gloss over the lowlight. As George Elek put it, relegation for newly promoted sides in this league is often gravitational. As Thom Yorke put it, gravity always wins.
Right, what’s still alive?
Charlton confirmed Oxford’s relegation in the lunchtime kick-off, beating Hull 2-1 to dent the Tigers’ top-six chances at the same time. Another pair of brilliant goals did the damage, sandwiching a John Egan header. Charlie Kelman stepped inside and bent one top-right with just enough whip; Jayden Fevrier did similar from the other side, chopping, moving central, and fizzing a shot low into the corner.
Penny for the thoughts of Sergej Jakirović, watching in the stands. Hull are out of the play-off places with one game to play. Luckily for him, Wrexham lost 3-1 to CHAMPIONSHIP CHAMPIONS Coventry on Sunday, meaning 6th and 7th are level on points and the goal difference is actually a touch tighter than it was.
Less lucky for Hull was Derby’s result.
If I told you that QPR were the better side for 70 minutes – 2-1 to the good and dominating the data (2.30 xG to 0.18, 21 shots to 5, 10 on target to 1) – you might agree that Derby’s late turnaround was a touch fortunate. But a set-piece header changed the tone, and Jaydon Banel delivered a 88th-minute winner: flip-flap, cut-in, bend, goal. Special talent. Big win. Huge final day for all three. Derby play Sheffield United (H), Wrexham play Middlesbrough (A) and Hull play Norwich (H).
From play-offs to automatics, and Hull to Hellberg.
Middlesbrough beat Watford 5-1. Does the scoreline flatter Boro, Watford having had good chances at 0-0 and 1-0? Probs not. But they were unusually ruthless, scoring through a Morgan Whittaker free-kick, David Strelec sliding in, Whittaker tapping in, Conway converting a penalty and then Conway again finishing a flowing counter. Kim Hellberg’s side were so clinical it was painful, not just for the Hornets but for the fans of a previously profligate Boro. They must’ve been thinking, “What if?”
What if Boro had picked up a couple more results over the past few weeks? They might be in 2nd place with a cushion, because those around them lost ground without losing.
That started with Millwall on Friday night, as they drew 1-1 with Leicester. Alex Neil’s team had the better of it and can probably count themselves unfortunate to run into long-term Foxes absentee Harry Souttar, who returned from injury for his first appearance in more than a year, scored, and stuck his head on everything.
A late Macaulay Langstaff leveller gave the Lions a share of the points and kept them in touching distance of 2nd place, because Ipswich v West Brom ended 0-0. That leaves Southampton, who almost-nearly-but-didn’t-quite shock Manchester City in the FA Cup semi-final, leading briefly late on before losing 2-1.
Finally, I’ve got to end on the lone Championship hat-trick. Adrian Segečić scored all three for Pompey as they beat Stoke 3-1. It wasn’t perfect but what I’ll call the Ned Flanders variety: left foot, left foot, left foot. That’s seven goal contributions for the Australian Croatian in his last five appearances.
📊 STATS
🔢 Championship Numberwang Streaks — Saints are unbeaten in 17, Derby haven’t drawn in 16, West Brom are unbeaten in 10, Millwall haven’t lost away in 9, Stoke haven’t won away in 8, and Sheffield Wednesday have broken all kinds of records.
🛑 Charlton’s Valley of Life — Charlton Athletic ended a run of four straight home defeats with victory over Hull City, securing Championship survival.
🏟️ Blades blip — Sheffield United have lost 10 home games – only the second time they’ve hit double figures outside the top flight. In total this season, they’ve lost two more games than Oxford and four more games than Leicester, who’ve both been relegated.
🎯 Lankshear lands — Will Lankshear scored his first career brace, taking him to 11 league goals for Oxford United.
📺 HIGHLIGHTS
Flip-flap fantasique from Derby’s Jaydon Banel
Not so mellow Yellow – a thunderstrike from Will Lankshear
Cometh the hour, Kelman the… Kel… man? What a hit!
🧮 LEAGUE TABLE
League One
⚽ SCORES
Blackpool 1-0 Leyton Orient
Bradford 1-1 Bolton
Burton Albion 1-1 Exeter
Cardiff 5-1 Northampton
Doncaster 1-1 Stevenage
Huddersfield 1-4 Mansfield
Lincoln 4-3 Wycombe
Luton 2-1 Barnsley
Plymouth 2-1 Port Vale
Rotherham 1-1 Reading
Stockport 3-1 Peterborough
Wigan 0-1 AFC Wimbledon
✍️ BIG STORIES
Huw Davies
THE PLAY-OFF RACE
Top-six mainstays Bradford and Bolton drew 1-1, with great finishes by Kayden Jackson and Johnny Kenny easing each side’s nerves. Bradford do still need to avoid defeat to Exeter; remarkably, only Bolton are assured of their play-off place as we enter the final week, although it’s likely that Stockport will pick up the point they need against Port Vale on Tuesday.
They picked up three against Peterborough, as Louie Barry reminded everyone of his quality. His hat-trick in the 3-1 victory doesn’t tell the full story, but our Stats section below gives a little more. Posh had led through a fine three-man move involving Harley Mills (20), Bolu Shofowoke (17) and Harry Leonard (22), so the future seems bright, as it often does at London Road. The present is a little more worrying: they’re not safe yet, though goal difference is heavily in their favour.
Luton and Plymouth beat Barnsley and Port Vale, Argyle doing so despite Conor Hazard’s red card for handling outside the box, after Bim Pepple and Lorent Tolaj had combined nicely for 1-0 – and that was just the first five minutes. Pepple’s second goal, to win the game, required strength, composure and a precise, sweetly-struck finish. He produced all three. He wasn’t far off joining the day’s array of hat-trick scorers, either, with a powerful shot from the edge of the box.
And so, Stevenage had a rough day. A 1-1 draw at Doncaster, coupled with those 2-1 wins for Luton and Argyle, deflated their cushion from three points to one, with goal difference against them. They host Wigan on Saturday and only a victory will do, because Argyle are likely to beat Northampton (sorry, Cobblers). After good work by Hakeeb Adelakun, Billy ‘still’ Sharp cancelled out a superb goal by relative whippersnapper Matt Phillips. Donny hit the post, had a penalty shout denied and forced a goal-line save in the 98th minute, so Stevenage cling to 6th… for now?
THE RELEGATION CRAWL
Peterborough and Leyton Orient are learning that nobody’s safe if they take two points from six games (Posh) or one from a run of five (Orient). The latter lost 1-0 to Blackpool – who rubber-stamped their own safety and have jumped from 20th to 13th in the space of a fortnight – which means last year’s play-off finalists must beat Burton Albion on final day to guarantee survival. Richie Wellens, banned again, could only watch from the East Stand’s roof as Dale Taylor’s penalty hit the post, rebounded off his goalkeeper’s boot and bobbled in.
Yet it could’ve been worse for the O’s. Exeter would have dumped them into the relegation zone with a win at Burton, and indeed they led for half of the match thanks to Ilmari Niskanen’s 16th goal contribution of the season (most of them from wing-back until his recent shuffle forward). But Burton equalised, having already forced Jack Bycroft into an excellent double save. Exeter may have asked them for a favour at full-time, because in order to stay up, the Grecians now have to beat Bradford while hoping the Brewers deny Orient.
It meant Burton had a good weekend, as they celebrated survival with long-overdue relief. And Wimbledon had a GREAT weekend, securing another year in League One just when things looked as dark as they had all season, following one point from their previous nine games. After Wigan took 16 shots without once hitting the target, Antwoine Hackford stole across Morgan Fox to score in the 90th minute. Job done.
RUNNING CLEAR
Any Other Business? Just some funny business. Mansfield won 4-1 at Huddersfield, scoring four goals from three shots on target, while fun in the sun was top of the agenda at the top of the table.
While Cardiff dismantled Northampton 5-1, a 100-point Lincoln reached their century with a classic knock. Their 4-3 win over Wycombe featured a brilliant goal by Jack Moylan, a brace for Reeco Hackett and a comedy fourth from a big hoick upfield. Mike Duff said afterwards that he’d told his Wycombe players they had “wasted 10 and a half months of their lives”, which sounds harsh after a second half away at the league leaders in which Wycombe had 21 shots, eight on target, with four big chances, but maybe he was talking about a different 10 and a half months of their lives. Don’t tell Mike Duff about your gap year.
Let’s not undersell Lincoln’s relentlessness. They haven’t just kept their foot on the gas; they’ve pushed the accelerator pedal through the floor, forcing everyone else – even Cardiff – to eat their dust. Observe their position approaching this season’s halfway point, and compare it to their lead over the rest of the top half today.
📊 STATS
🌟 Louie Louie… Louie — As well as scoring three goals, Louie Barry had 10 shots against Posh – 9 of them from inside the box – and created 4 chances, while making 10 tackles, interceptions or ball recoveries, two of which (both on David Okagbue) resulted in goalscoring opportunities for Stockport. He played 73 minutes in all.
💨 Pepple dash — With 14, Plymouth Argyle’s Aribim Pepple leads all players in England’s top four tiers for goals scored in 2026.
🍊 Binary Blackpool — Five of the Seasiders’ last six matches have finished 1-0 (four in their favour and one in losing to fellow binary boys Stevenage).
📉 Cobblers collapse — Northampton Town have suffered 27 defeats, equalling their worst-ever EFL season tally.
🟥 Ready steady chaos — Plymouth Argyle became the first English league side since 2016 to score and see red inside the first five minutes of a match.
⏳ Good things come to those who wait — Antwoine Hackford’s survival-sealing goal in the 90th minute against Wigan was the latest that Wimbledon have scored a winner in a league game since Ronan Curtis in March 2024 against MK Dons – a fixture that’s back on the League One card next season.
📺 HIGHLIGHTS
Moylan, muy bueno
A Phillips fillip for Stevenage
StephenRegan Hendry finds the corner pocket
🧮 LEAGUE TABLE
League Two
⚽ SCORES
Accrington Stanley 3-3 Crawley
Barnet 6-2 Gillingham
Bristol Rovers 4-0 Cheltenham
Cambridge 3-0 Barrow
Chesterfield 2-0 Crewe
Colchester 0-1 Notts County
Grimsby 4-0 Swindon
MK Dons 3-0 Tranmere
Newport County 3-2 Oldham
Salford 2-0 Bromley
Shrewsbury 2-2 Fleetwood
Walsall 0-2 Harrogate
✍️ BIG STORIES
Matt Watts
“So, let me get this straight. We’re 45 games into a 46-game season and we still don’t know who is going to win the league, who is going to claim the third automatic promotion spot, who is going to claim the last two play-off berths and who is going to fill the two relegation places?”
Welcome to League Two, my friends.
MK Dons secured promotion with a 3-0 win at home to Tranmere. More than that, they went top of the league, thanks to Bromley’s 2-0 defeat at Salford. The Ravens had been No.1 in the League Two charts since 29th December, but now they’re playing catch-up. Paul Warne is yet to win a league title as a player or as a manager, despite several promotions, but a win at Fleetwood on Saturday would change that.
Salford’s Thursday-night victory moved them up to 3rd, only for Cambridge to reclaim the final automatic promotion spot by beating Barrow 3-0. James Gibbons scored the pick of the goals for the U’s, who kept their 19th clean sheet of the season – the most in League Two. Notts County ensured it’ll be a three-way fight for 3rd on final day, as Nick Tsaroulla’s goal steered them to victory over Colchester.
A Jaze Kabia-inspired Grimsby shot up to 6th with a 4-0 victory over Ian Holloway’s Swindon, who slipped out of the top seven altogether after Chesterfield’s 2-0 win at home to Crewe. Kabia’s first EFL hat-trick took him to 18 league goals for the season, second only to Aaron Drinan (22) in the Golden Boot stakes. Grimsby go to Tranmere next weekend, while Swindon host Chesterfield. Tasty.
That fixture means that Barnet can’t finish in the top seven, despite being only three points behind Chesterfield. Nevertheless, Dean Brennan’s side put on a clinic in their 6-2 victory over Gillingham. Callum Stead became the first player to score five goals in an EFL game since Jordan Rhodes in 2012.
With 19 points taken from the last 21 available, the Bees will no doubt be ones to watch next season – as will Bristol Rovers. The Gas beat Cheltenham 4-0 for an eighth win in a row, which is the longest winning run in the EFL this season. As a man of his word, Steve Evans spent the final 10 minutes of the game in the Thatchers End, in amongst the Gasheads. Ellis Harrison’s hat-trick was a good enough excuse.
In the battle to stay up, Newport won a five-goal thriller against Oldham thanks to Bobby Kamwa’s winner in the 19th minute of stoppage time. Kamwa was the hero when he scored a beauty to put the Exiles 1-0 up, the villain when he missed a penalty in the 105th minute, then the hero once again.
Elsewhere, Crawley came from behind three times in their 3-3 draw with Accrington and Harrogate made it back-to-back victories by winning 2-0 at Walsall. It. Is. Tight.
Finally, congratulations to York, who scored an equaliser in the 103rd minute against their title rivals Rochdale to seal a return to the EFL after a decade away.
What a day!
📊 STATS
🤯 Steady on — Callum Stead scored five goals for Barnet, the first player to do so in the EFL since 2012 and the first in the top four tiers since Sergio Aguero in 2015; Stead’s hat-trick inside 16 minutes is the fastest on EFL record (i.e. since 2004/05).
🔥 Unstoppable Gas — Bristol Rovers have won eight straight league games – just the second such run in their Football League history.
🎩 Kabia magic — Jaze Kabia scored Grimsby’s first Football League hat-trick since 2020, and the second perfect hat-trick in League Two this season.
📺 HIGHLIGHTS
Bowling, Shane. Warne celebrates promotion at Stadium MK.
He’s under there somewhere: Steve Evans in the Thatchers End!
Welcome to the world of ‘why not?’ A stunning last minute-equaliser from Shrewsbury’s Ismeal Kabia
🧮 LEAGUE TABLE
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