Manchester U 9 Ipswich 0

Andy Cole

Man­chester Uni­ted 9 Ips­wich To­wn 0, Old Traf­ford Sta­dium, Eng­lish Pre­mier Lea­gue, Mar­ch 4, 1995. Man­chester United’s 9-0 win over Ips­wich To­wn in Mar­ch 1995 cre­ated a new scor­ing re­cord in the Pre­mier Lea­gue. And al­though Uni­ted were strong fa­vour­ites to keep the points at ho­me ag­ainst The Tract­or Boys, no one could have ex­pec­ted such a result.

Man­chester Uni­ted, who sought to ex­tract re­venge on Ips­wich To­wn af­ter hav­ing suf­fered a 3-2 de­feat ag­ainst The Blues at Port­man Road in the re­verse fix­ture earli­er in the 1994-95 sea­son, were three goals up at the in­ter­val and the de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons put six more pa­st away goal­keeper Craig For­rest be­fore ref­er­ee Gra­ham Poll blew his whistle for full-time. Fol­low­ing the early skir­mishes, Man­chester Uni­ted went ahead in the ga­me when Roy Ke­ane re­ceived a back-pass from Ma­rk Hug­hes and sent an ac­cur­ate shot in­to the bot­tom left-hand cor­ner of the net from out­side the area in the 15th min­ute of the one-sided af­fair. Al­ex Ferguson´s play­ers did not rest on their laurels and qui­ckly doubled their ad­vant­age as a well-timed cross by twenty-one-year old wing­er Ry­an Gig­gs fou­nd new ac­quis­i­tion Andy Cole who pla­ced his ef­fort pa­st For­rest and in­to the bot­tom right-hand cor­ner of the goal on­ly eight min­utes la­ter. And wi­th less than ten min­utes left of the fir­st ha­lf, the for­mer New­castle Uni­ted goal plun­der­er ma­naged to be­at For­rest for a sec­ond time as he put the ball in­to the back of the net from just six yards out af­ter Hughes´s over­head-kick had hit the crossbar.

Man­chester Uni­ted star­ted the sec­ond pe­riod where they had left off in the fir­st and ex­ten­ded their lead even fur­ther when Cole head­ed ho­me an ex­cel­lent cross de­livered by De­nis Ir­win in the 52nd min­ute of the clash. Uni­ted kept on push­ing for­ward and Ma­rk Hug­hes net­ted two goals for the hosts in the 54th and 58th min­utes re­spect­ively be­fore Cole ad­ded his fourth goal of the day four min­utes pa­st the hour ma­rk to make the sco­reline 7-0 in fa­vour of The Reds. And as the clock ticked down, Paul In­ce made it 8-0 to Man­chester Uni­ted when the mid­fielder fou­nd the tar­get in the 72nd min­ute, whi­le Cole re­gistered the ninth goal of the tie wi­th three min­utes left, thus be­com­ing the fir­st play­er in Pre­mier Lea­gue his­tory to score five goals in a mat­ch. The 9-0 vic­tory over Ips­wich meant that sec­ond pla­ced Man­chester Uni­ted now had a bet­ter goal dif­fer­ence than Black­burn Rov­ers, who were top­ping the ta­ble. To say that Al­ex Fer­guson was con­tent wi­th his team´s per­form­ance ag­ainst Ips­wich was, in this case, an un­der­state­ment. Al­ex Fer­guson: “The most im­port­ant as­pect was the pas­sion, the passing and the move­ment; it was mag­ni­fi­cent. This is the type of per­form­ance that you al­ways dream about, but on­ly hap­pens once or twice in a life­time.” Man­chester Uni­ted Te­am: Pe­ter Schmei­chel, Ste­ve Bru­ce, Ga­ry Pal­lister, De­nis Ir­win, Ry­an Gig­gs, Paul In­ce, An­drei Kanchel­s­kis, Ma­rk Hug­hes, Roy Ke­ane, Bri­an Mc­Clair, An­drew Cole. Sub­stitutes: Nicky Butt, Lee Sharpe, Ga­ry Wal­sh. Ips­wich To­wn Te­am: Craig For­rest, Frank Yal­lop, Ste­ve Sedgley, Da­vid Linighan, Ste­ve Pal­mer, Neil Thomp­son, Stu­art Slater, John Wark, Geraint Wil­li­ams, Lee Chap­man, Al­ex Math­ie. Sub­stitutes: Ian Mar­shall, Paul Ma­son, Phil Morgan.

 

Andy Cole Quickfacts

Andy Cole amassed 93 goals in 193 Pre­mier Lea­gue ap­pear­ances for Man­chester Uni­ted, and col­lec­ted five Pre­mier Lea­gue titles, two FA Cups, and the Cham­pi­ons Lea­gue whi­le at Old Trafford.

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