In the UK

Danny Drinkwater picked up his first point with Aston Villa when he started for the Midlands side as they came back from a goal down to draw 1-1 at Brighton in the Premier League.

Conor Gallagher (pictured top) made an impressive start to life at Swansea City, as he made his debut for the Welsh side from the start of their entertaining 2-1 win over Wigan Athletic. It did not look quite so promising when Wigan took the lead after 16 minutes, but just three minutes later Gallagher slid a fine through-ball behind the Latics defence for another new Swansea loan signing, Rhian Brewster, to slot home the equaliser, before Andre Ayew gave them victory in the second half. Marc Guehi was an unused substitute, having also moved to the Liberty Stadium in January.Trevoh Chalobah helped Huddersfield Town end their run of three consecutive defeats with a 0-0 draw at home against high-flying Brentford, the Chelsea loanee coming closest to scoring for the Terriers with a first-half header which flew narrowly over the bar.

Jake Clarke-Salter and Birmingham City were held to a 1-1 draw by Cardiff City, despite taking the lead early on, but were the happier of the two sides with a result which keeps them nine points clear of the relegation zone.

Richard Nartey, who spoke to this website last week, was a second-half substitute for Burton Albion in their 1-0 win over MK Dons in League One last Tuesday. In the fourth tier, Josh Grant came off the bench late on for Plymouth Argyle as they held on to a narrow lead over Mansfield, and the Pilgrims added another in injury time to finish 3-1 winners, their sixth victory from their last seven matches.

Nathan Baxter and Ross County were in action for the first time in 2020 as Scottish football returned on Saturday, but they suffered an FA Cup upset in a 1-0 defeat away at Championship side Ayr United.

Overseas

Tiemoue Bakayoko scored his first goal of the season for Monaco as they faced Paris Saint-Germain for the second time in four days in a rearranged fixture, but it was merely a consolation in the latter stages of a 4-1 defeat to the Ligue 1 leaders.

Mario Pasalic was also in midweek action for Atalanta, but there was to be no repeat of their Coppa Italia heroics this time around. Travelling to Fiorentina in the quarter-finals, the same side they had defeated in last season’s semis, Pasalic crashed a first-half header against the crossbar but it was the home side who emerged victorious, 2-1, despite going down to 10 men.

There were two matches last week for Lucas Piazon and Rio Ave, and the Brazilian opened the scoring with a well-placed free-kick away at Benfica in the Portuguese Cup quarter-finals last Tuesday. Rio Ave couldn’t hold on to that lead, exiting the competition with a 3-2 defeat but things went better at the weekend when Piazon was again involved in the first goal, this time setting up Diego Lopes in a 2-0 home win over Boavista.