Blackburn Rovers 4 - Manchester United 3

[Ricky]

The Ewood faithful have been waiting for a 'hero' for some time, last night they got their hero. David Bentley, making his first appearence since signing a three and a half year contract from Arsenal silenced the travelling fans with a superbly taken hat trick. What Arsene Wenger would have given for a hat trick hero last night. It would appear that Bentley was snapped up for a nominal fee and hopefully the young former england u21 star will finally start to fulfill the promise shown over the previous years.

Bentley's first goal came when he was first to react to an excellent save from a Morten Gamst Pedersen free kick, Van Der Sar throwing himself to his left to palm Pedersens pin point strike onto the post. Bentley nipped in and somehow managed to squeeze the ball between the keeper and Wes Brown.

United hit back quickly when a fierce drive from Rooney was only pushed out as far as the off-side Louis Saha who struck the ball into the bottom left hand corner of Friedels goal. Replays showed that Saha was clearly off side when the shot from Rooney came into the box, and therefore should have been ruled out.

Rovers responded in the best possible way and pushed United onto the back foot. A classic mix up between Ferdinand and Van Der Sar led to Rovers second goal of the night. A cross into the box was met by Ferdinand who completely missed his keeper with a back header that looped invitingly to Bentley. wes Brown did his best to keep the ball out but it was forced over the line by Bentley. Rovers fans were in elation, chants of Rio Rio Rio rang out around Ewood Park. Things got better on the turn of half time when a cross from Reid was handled by Wes Brown. Fergie could have no arguments, although he did, about the penalty, both Brown's arms came out behind him and a pen was the only outcome. The resulting penalty was coolly despatched by Lucas Neill, who slotted past the keeper with min imum effort. The crown went mad and at half time we were 3-1 to the good.

The second half started brightly and Rovers were soon in dreamland and 4-1 up. Savage caught Neville out of position and wandered into acres of space before crossing for Bentley, who waited for the ball to drop before smashing an unstoppable strike past the United keeper. Bentley reeled away to celebrate and left RFW wondering if maybe Ferdinand wasn't a midfielder and maybe Van Nistlerooy wasn't a sub!!!

Some poor defending led to United getting a goal back, Todd tried to shepherd the ball out of play but was caught out by Ronaldo who crossed the ball to Van Nistlerooy who had the easy task of slotting home from 1 yard out. Van Nistlerooy slotted his second, and United's third a few minutes later. At 4-3 the fans were getting nervous and Robbie Savage stated after the game that he felt that if united got one more goal they would go on to win the game...... they never got the goal and they never went on to win the game. Ferdinand was booked twice within 3 minutes, the second for a lunge on Robbie savage who left the pitch on a stretcher. Rovers held out and recorded their first double over united since just after the war, Bentley the scorer of the first ever premiership hat-trick past United.

Obviously RFW took the defeat well and gave praise to the battling qualities of Rovers....... yeah right!!!!