Oliver Norwood’s penalty with the last kick of the game finally gave Sheffield United their first win of the Premier League season as they beat Wolves 2-1 at Bramall Lane on Saturday.
The skipper smashed home from 12 yards after Fabio Silva fouled George Baldock in the seventh minute of time added on as the Blades broke their duck at the 11th attempt.
It had looked like they would have to settle for a point as Jean-Ricner Bellegarde’s 89th-minute strike had cancelled out Cameron Archer’s impressive opener.
But this was just the tonic Paul Heckingbottom needed after a harrowing start to the campaign on their return to the top tier and they are now just two points off safety after Burnley and Bournemouth lost again.
Elsewhere, Ashley Young’s unfortunate own goal denied Everton a sixth win in eight matches as Brighton snatched a late 1-1 draw at Goodison Park.
Defender Vitalii Mykolenko looked like being an unlikely match-winner with his first goal in 18 months until Kaoru Mitoma’s cross took a freakish deflection off the Toffees’ other full-back with six minutes remaining.
Having taken the lead, Everton had done a good job of keeping the visitors at bay – assisted by VAR ruling out Lewis Dunk’s equaliser for offside and also a good save by Jordan Pickford to deny the Seagulls captain – and Sean Dyche’s side looked well set for their first back-to-back Premier League wins in 13 months.
It says a lot about how perspectives have changed in the last few weeks that Everton were disappointed with a draw against a team who finished sixth last season, but in the see-saw world of the Premier League the Merseysiders remain upwardly mobile while Brighton manager Roberto De Zerbi is still trying to work out why his team cannot convert possession into points.
Meanwhile, Nathan Collins scored his first goal for Brentford to clinch a comeback victory over West Ham.
Neal Maupay put the hosts in front early on with his first goal for a year. The Irons hit back through Mohammed Kudus and Jarrod Bowen to go into the break 2-1 up.
An own goal from West Ham defender Konstantinos Mavropanos levelled the score, before Collins headed in Mathias Jensen's cross for the winner.
Burnley became the first club in top-flight history to lose their opening six home fixtures of a season as Crystal Palace deepened the gloom over Turf Moor in a 2-0 win for the Londoners.
Jeffrey Schlupp put Palace ahead in the 22nd minute and Tyrick Mitchell’s second Palace goal sealed it in stoppage time as Burnley suffered a club-record eighth consecutive top-flight home defeat, a run that dates back to the final two fixtures of the 2021-22 campaign in which they were relegated.
A similar fate will surely await if Vincent Kompany cannot come up with answers quickly as his side again could not find any cutting edge – now without a goal in six of their 11 Premier League games.
