Man United 5 Wimbledon 1

Andy Cole

Man­chester Uni­ted 5 Wim­bledon 1, Old Traf­ford, Eng­lish Pre­mier Lea­gue, Oct­ober 17, 1998. Af­ter beat­ing South­ampton 3-0 at The Dell in their pre­vi­ous Pre­mier Lea­gue fix­ture, Man­chester Uni­ted trashed Wim­bledon 5-1 at Old Traf­ford cour­tesy of two goals from Andy Cole each si­de of the break and a goal apiece by Ry­an Gig­gs, Da­vid Beck­ham, and Dwight Yorke. 

Af­ter a two-week in­ter­na­tion­al break, high fly­ing Man­chester Uni­ted played hosts to Wim­bledon at Old Traf­ford on Sat­urday the 17th of Oct­ober 1998. Fol­low­ing the early skir­mishes, Eng­land for­ward Andy Cole opened the scor­ing ac­count for Sir Al­ex Ferguson´s title con­tenders wi­th a firm­ly struck and well-pla­ced shot pa­st the out­stretched left hand of Wim­bledon and Scot­land goal­keeper Neil Sul­li­van and in­to the bot­tom right cor­ner of the net af­ter nine­teen min­utes of in­tense ac­tion. Man­chester Uni­ted con­tin­ued to mount dan­ger­ous at­tacks as the fir­st ha­lf pro­gressed, but ag­ainst the flow of play Lam­beth born mid­fielder Ja­son Eu­ell ma­naged to level the score for The Wombles in the 39th min­ute of the en­counter. The Old Traf­ford men hit back im­me­di­ately and re­gained their ad­vant­age when Ry­an Gig­gs head­ed ho­me a near per­fect cross from fel­low wing­er Jes­per Blom­qv­ist just six min­utes la­ter in the mat­ch. Fol­low­ing the ha­lf-time in­ter­mis­sion, Da­vid Beck­ham net­ted a third goal for Man­chester Uni­ted wi­th a low long dis­tance ef­fort that flew pa­st Sul­li­van and in­to the bot­tom left-hand cor­ner of the onion bag a mere three min­utes in­to the sec­ond pe­riod be­fore Trin­id­ad and To­bago in­ter­na­tion­al Dwight Yorke joi­ned the score­sheet in the 54th min­ute of the tie af­ter tak­ing full ad­vant­age of a dread­ful mis­take in the Wim­bledon de­fence. And wi­th on­ly a couple min­utes left on the watch of ref­er­ee Ga­ry Wil­lard, Cole com­pleted his double wi­th an ex­cel­lent in­di­vidu­al dis­play to se­cure a com­fort­able 5-1 Pre­mier Lea­gue tri­umph for Man­chester Uni­ted ag­ainst the plucky So­uth West Lon­doners. Man­chester Uni­ted Te­am: Rai­mond van der Gouw, Ga­ry Ne­ville, Wes Bro­wn, Jaap Stam, Phil Ne­ville, Da­vid Beck­ham, Jes­per Blom­qv­ist, Ry­an Gig­gs, Roy Ke­ane, Andy Cole, Dwight Yorke. Sub­stitutes: Jordi Cruy­ff, Paul Scho­les, John Curtis. Wim­bledon Te­am: Neil Sul­li­van, Ken­ny Cun­ning­ham, Dean Black­well, Chris Perry, Alan Kimble, Ben Thatch­er, Rob­bie Earle, Ja­son Eu­ell, Andy Ro­berts, Mi­chael Hug­hes, Carl Le­aburn. Sub­stitutes: Neal Ar­d­ley, Mar­cus Gayle.

 

Andy Cole Quickfacts

Wi­th com­pet­i­tion for places be­com­ing in­creas­ingly fierce, Andy Cole ev­entually lost his fir­st te­am berth and was sold to Black­burn Rov­ers for a fee of £8 mil­lion mid­way thro­ugh the 2001-02 season.

UNITED FEATURES UNITED REPORTS UNITED REVIEWS UNITED STORIES

Front Page